Lathe
by l'amour-the-poet
Summary: To them, her story will always be tied to Clark Kent. Like every sentence ever uttered in journalism, that’s both the truth and a lie. Chloe Sullivan, Infamous Spoiler Speculation. Chloe/Davis
1. lathe

* * *

_**Lathe**- a tool for shaping metal or wood._

**

* * *

**

**I. **  
_Chloe Sullivan isn't a reporter anymore. Not a counselor, not even a copy editor.  
The people behind the flashes of camera phones in her face and the voices pressing on her don't care about that.  
To them, her story will always be tied to Clark Kent.  
Like every sentence ever uttered in journalism, that's both the truth and a lie._

_**i.** _After Lana Lang left, (this time she'd gone for good, super powered and packed full of the only thing that could hurt him) he'd called her, set her cell ringing in the antiseptic corner of the hospital room, just to talk about it.  
She'd felt like his constant.

_**ii.**_  
It only took two days for her to see that he wasn't hers.  
She'd been spying on Oliver. (Being blackmailed did that to a girl.)

Oliver Queen's private jet had four security cameras, feeds for every single day she'd been taken over. When she found the feed about her memories it felt like Watergate.

_**iii. **_  
When she fought Clark on it, he looked hurt and baffled, made her feel guilty for every word she spit out.  
He'd taken a piece of her.  
"I did it so you could have a normal life."  
"The only way you could have done that is turned back time and kept from hitting Metropolis. You couldn't have."  
"My secret burdened you. You told me that."  
"It must have been the construct. I don't remember that."  
"You told me I was right."  
"That's complete crap. You did it because you were scared."  
"I was scared for you. I couldn't let you be hurt because of my secret. You needed a normal life."

She'd been living in a hospital room as husband she didn't remember marrying clung to life support.  
His legacy of normalcy. She didn't say that, wouldn't hurt him.

"Those memories were part of me. I asked you…"  
She didn't know what she expected, an apology, for him to see her?  
Clark was eternally Clark. The boy who loved Lana (that one girl) with a fearful intensity, the one who grew up on a farm in the middle of a small town, the boy who was sure he could cure the ills of the world.  
He couldn't understand.

_**iv.**_  
The first week passed as Jimmy recovered, cracked jokes across their dinner table over a sling, got all the variables right. She wanted to make him happy even though things weren't quite easy.

_**v.**_  
More than once she found herself reaching for the phone, calling up the last number she'd added to her address book. She'd known him all of a month and he'd somehow ended at the top.  
Davis Bloome.  
One ring…two rings… three rings…  
(She didn't know if it was because she was desperate to see if he was alright or if she wanted to feel like herself again.)  
She only knows that she felt lost and sick when she didn't get a response.

**II.**  
_Then, two weeks after she found Clark had stripped every memory of his powers from her mind, he'd told the world, because the world needed to know._

_**i.**_  
This moment, he's everywhere. Lois's scoop- the face on the first page of the Planet, the Inquisitor, plastered on newspaper headlines across the world.  
She distances herself from this 'Superman'. He is alien to her

"Miss Sullivan, what was it like to know about the man behind the red and blue blur all these years?"  
"I didn't."

**_ii._**  
There are walls, new ones that form as she gets mobbed by reporters, curious about the super man's very first confidant.  
"You should have told me." Jimmy tells her.  
(He wanted to be the first. The one she doted on, the one she told secrets to, the one who never fell behind Clark Kent.)  
There are more of Clark's secrets, things she can't tell him because they are not hers to give. He knows they are there.

Soon enough there is no point in not acknowledging the rift. He leaves earlier, comes home later, while she fills out applications for jobs that did not fill her qualifications just because she needs to get away.  
She speaks to him before he leaves from work; he kisses her stiffly on the cheek before bedtime.  
They try.  
She thinks that she should let herself be happy  
And still isn't.  
_**  
iii.**_  
She keeps her memories as her most jealously guarded secret- her own vanishing on her, of clutching onto Davis's neck tighter than a tourniquet and feeling completely safe, of running away from her husband and her best friend until he brought her back.  
He wanted to be the good guy.  
She thinks he shouldn't have, not for this.

_**iv. **_  
She can't be the tragic heroine.  
The story didn't end and he didn't give up on her.  
He'd dropped all the noble excuses, told her he couldn't see her marry the wrong man. She'd been kissing Davis, feeling something squeezing at her gut even as her mind told her she needed to go though with the wedding.  
She'd been the first to pull away.  
He told her he'd wait.

_**v.**_  
Maybe he wants to be a good guy, still. She's gone off and gotten herself married, and it means more than she wants it to.  
He's been raised that way, with guilt and denial in equal parts. She's out of bounds now because he won't be that guy.  
She wants her friend back.

**III.**

_She's given up on the anger now, and Clark feels more like a stranger than ever. He's full of good deeds, unburdening himself on growing up, his newly scrutinised relationship on every tabloid she sees.  
Lois and Clark.  
It feels to fast, too sudden, he's still her friend and she's her cousin and she knows that rebounds always shatter the second party to bits.  
(She'd seen Clark heartbroken when he ended up at the pushed into the corner of a girl's heart. He couldn't help it himself. "Lois is so… Lois.")  
He was justified.  
_  
She finally sees that she'd looked so hard for the man in him that she fancied he was there.

_**i.**_  
Some days she wishes he hadn't shaped her, but knows she can't blame him for what she is now.  
She's been treading a fine line for so long she doesn't know how to stop.

She would have killed for Clark. It was the mantra, in her head, the construct had been integrated into her, turned her to something steely and cold, made her do things she wouldn't have done otherwise.  
Braniac would have had a practical reason to back up every action. Not emotions, not loyalty.  
Those were all her.

_**ii.**_  
(She still has them buried deep- the emotions, the loyalty. They were for some boy called Clark, her hero. This new Clark is the hero of the world.  
Neither of them belong to her. Neither of them has to define her.  
She should let herself be happy.  
She isn't.)

_**iii.**_  
It annoys her, how she remembers nothing about walking down the isle, saying wedding vows, being abducted at her wedding.  
The construct always has a reason.

_**iv.**_  
Finally, the heroine comes out of her tower.  
She looks for Davis,  
His place at the hospital has been vacated, he has stopped showing up for work since before her wedding. Two other emts have disappeared, too and she knows this is why he sounded so scared.  
All her anger at Clark for leaving her alone and she wasn't there when the only friend she had left needed her.  
For once, she feels like the betrayer.

_**v.**_  
Chloe doesn't need the super genius IQ to put it all together.  
Davis and his blackouts (worse, more frequent), the Kryptonian symbol for Doom she'd drawn on the pad in her desk, her mind telling her she had to get married. His disappearance.  
The construct always had a reason.

_**vi.**_  
She has skills enough to find his address on her own.  
(She goes with caution, makes double sure that Clark won't follow her. She doesn't want to think of how Clark would help Davis if he could.)

It's a cathartic moment, but the door is as plain as any other in the little complex. It doesn't say 'Here be the Beast.'  
She has a reason without logic. She's been here, she knows this  
Davis is behind that door and he needs her.

**I.**  
_Chloe Sullivan doesn't have to be a reporter or a counselor or even a copy editor. She knows enough about being a friend._

_

* * *

  
_Endnotes: The outline format is...experimental. (I'm interested to know if it works for this or makes me look like a nut.)

And of course this is not the end because I got the urge to write Davis angst and actually have something happen. There is a part 2 I'm working on with the _actual sheltering_ from a Davis perspective.

So, what do you think about it? Quibbles much loved, as well as anything else.


	2. vessel

* * *

_**Vessel**_- a hollow utensil that gives shape to the substance poured into it**.**

**

* * *

**I._  
Davis Bloome is no longer a paramedic, not the everyday hero going through the tickertape parade. He hasn't stepped forward and declared to the world all he is.  
He may not be real, but he can't let himself believe that he's just the ultimate destroyer, because then that's all he will be.  
He tells himself that he's a shell that woke up.  
_  
i. There used to be messages to his cell phone, about the same time every day. Chloe's voice, full of familiar surrounding warmth, concern and guilt. A voice that meant she was cured of that construct inside of her.

ii. He remembers it well, cold, terrible; just like whatever was in him. They were the same. One wanted to absorb, one wanted to destroy. He knew there was nothing of her left, even as Chloe's hands and Chloe's face had sealed him in that crystal. He would have promised anything if her eyes would just come back.

iii. It was like the story of the monkey's paw. You wished, you wished, you got your wish, and then you had nothing left. (It was sick, he'd thought, that the last memory he'd ever have of her would be tainted with cold.)

iv. After about seven days the messages tapered off into emptiness. He still replayed them.

II.  
_He's kept his promise. He's hasn't returned to the Metropolis general. He's probably been fired by now; but he's not human. It's not like he needs to eat._

i. He's found a way to hold it in him, just maybe. There are drugs that freeze the spikes within his body, keep them from piercing through, stiffen every inch of human skin, and fill his mind with images he doesn't ever want to see again. He needs to and deserves to see them a thousand times over because they all came from what he was. What he can become again.

human side, for a while, has some relief. There are lapses of hours without blackouts. He pretends he is Davis. There are hours where he tries, does anything he can do to help, anything that doesn't involve his past. He thinks he's fooling himself. Doing Samaritan deeds will never make up for what he is.

iii. He hears the name Chloe Sullivan a lot more, now and understands. She spends her day shying away from reporters, hiding away from the world where Superman is a household name. He knows she's not happy.

iv. He hasn't ventured near Isis. It's the only right thing he can do by her. What was once Davis Bloome, paramedic, is really a shell, covering the darkness that can rip her to shreds. She's cured now. There's no guarantee that she'll be safe. He won't risk her.

v. There is nothing human about him, no vulnerable epidermis, no normal human heart, just a genetic camouflage; there is no way that going to confession can clear his soul. She's still his salvation

III._  
Maybe it's inevitable that this patchwork of vain hope he's constructed will fall apart. Just not today._

i. Every other part of him is geared toward her more intensely than before. He replays memories, until he can picture every detail, the clutch of her fingers against the fabric of his uniform, the nervous gleam of moisture on her lips, her face warring between openness and fear, a split second when it felt like he had something.

ii. He still dreams of her, of the memories. But they are just that, snapshots that leave him feeling broken. He can't hold her there, can't tell her to stay because he's afraid that the day will come that there won't be anything left of him to see her anymore.

iii. He should have been prepared for the fact that it was meant to evolve into something darker, more destructive. The injections hold it frozen, sometimes for just hours now. The lapses are shortening again. The supply of injections is depleted faster every time.

iv. Even dreams of her become touched by death. (He sees her reaching out to him as it takes hold. It's her hand on his shoulder, her face so convinced and trusting. Believing him. A traitorous little part of him wants it, can feel himself instinctively leaning into the touch. He needs to yell at her, tell her to move, now that he knows. He can't move the sound past his vocal cords. He's frozen, the drugs fighting his way through the shell encasing him. He can't control it, no more than he can voice anything. He can't say a word even as the spikes break their way across his skin, pierce her.) He knows her eyes.

v. It's not working and he knows it. He slides the needle into his arm and his fingers tremble like those of the hundreds of addicts he's put on IVs.

IV.  
_He has to believe it will get better; or simply end. (He doesn't have that choice.)_

i. It'll be two hours this time; maybe less, maybe more. For once he doesn't see the images, and wonders if it is trying to purge itself of guilt. Limbo is a relief that he doesn't deserve.

ii. He can still see, still hear. There's the opening a shutting of doors behind the wall, the rattle of the knob. No, he thinks, not now. He hopes it's the landlord taking him for a stoner again. (No one else knows who he is, here.)

iii. "Davis! I know you're in there. Open the door, will you?" He knows her voice. The knob rattles once, twice, stops altogether. She'll leave, he thinks. She's got to.

iv. There's no tell tale twist of key before the door swings open. She's there again, filling the gaps between dream and reality; but that was a dream and this isn't. He knows how it ends and he can't let it happen. He realizes he can't move.

V._  
Chance is not kind._

i. "Davis. Are you okay?!" It feels like fire and not a single fiber of muscle twitches. A rattle from human lungs. "Davis." She crouches on her knees on the unremarkable carpet, close enough that he can smell freesias. One inch, one inch would be enough. Its one thing to feel pain, another to feel the grief before it happens. She touches him and she dies.

ii. This is where the dream starts. He can feel slight tremors building in his shoulders. Any moment she's going to reach out and...

iii. She's different. There's nothing tactile about how she stays a whole six inches away. "I wish I could make you relax, but I have a feeling that's not happening." The small tan hand holding the discarded needle transfixes him. "So this is how you're dealing with it. Somehow, I doubt this is FDA approved." (She's got an hour where he can't argue. She starts at the beginning.)

iv. He can speak, and she's said almost all he needed to say. She knows about the destruction of the wedding, the fact that he's changing, what he is before he says a word. She's already latched onto her goal and that's that. He expects her to draw up a chart any minute.

"You'll be in danger. There's a chance that without that computer inside of you, or whatever program it was supposed to be running, it'll destroy you. You want to help me but I can't let you do whatever you are going to do. "

"Does it look like I have a plan? I'm going to be here, and try and figure out one."

v. This is too much like before. He can't keep still; she's watching him like he deserves to be held when she knows. He feels weak; thinks that he's going to crumble and seal her fate.

"It's different. Don't you see? Before, I was scared. Now, I know what I am and you can't just… I'm not an innocent man. I'm a murderer."  
His fingers clench and unclench and he's perfectly aware that his nails can't make the slightest scratch on his skin.  
Something flickers across her face and she doesn't move.

"That makes me even more qualified to help."  
She thinks of her hands, the signals flat lining over the hospital bed, the twist of loyalty inside her and something much darker. Oliver saying they were in the same boat. The fact that she couldn't find Sebastian no matter how many discharge records she went through.  
"I think I may be too."

VI.  
_(He could still try to do the right thing. Keep with the injections until everything starts spiraling again; until he can't remember her face and she can go back to the life that she's running from.  
That doesn't sound right.)_

i. "I'm here to be your friend. I know when I… was that, it's what I needed most. I won't let you do this thing alone." He doesn't have to try to believe that.

ii. She looks at home in the center of his empty kitchen, not frightened, not anything but Chloe, and when she asks him to tell her word-for-word what the construct said, it feels like he's talking about someone else.

iii. She never even pauses over the fact that he's not real, not in the same way she is. "The way I see it, it doesn't matter. You know Descartes right? You think, therefore you are. If you were just a bit of coding you wouldn't be fighting this."  
He thinks that just at much about her as it does about him.

I.  
_Davis Bloome is a part of the monster that wasn't made to wake up. His skin shouldn't hold chaos underneath without cracking, but he has to believe it can.  
Sometimes its almost easy to._

_

* * *

  
_Endnotes: The next part picks up on the sheltering, Clark's new demonization by Linda Lake, Chloe's realization of how there's no deus ex machina way to fix the situation and trying to justify an 'emotional' affair. I'm going to incorporate most of the Infamous/Beast/Stiletto spec here, so it will be on a dark kick for a while.

Comments are very much appreciated and loved. :) I will reply. If you have the time tell me how you see it, and where you see it going, yourself. Justa sentence or a single quibble is very inspiring.


	3. lithophane

* * *

_**Lithophane**-an etched artwork in translucent porcelain that reveals a three dimensional picture with depth and detail._

* * *

** I. **The One Who is All.  
_The foundation was named for Isis, she'd told Lana, the Eqyptian goddess of love, and life, and healing. She saw Isis as the nurturer; the one who went to the ends of the earth for only one person, brought Ra to his knees._

**_i. _** Lana had seen the Isis Foundation a front for anti-Luthorcorp operations; only later as a place where the meteor-infected got on their feet. It was like a ward for patients with non-terminal diseases, a stopping place until they stepped into the whole wide world again. Isis was not meant to be a prison.

**_ii._** Davis was looking for a prison, kept himself walled from the world the only way he could. He wasn't like all the other cases that she'd tried to help meteor infected, all those times she'd failed miserably. The other meteor mutants had wanted the connection of seeing other people like themselves. He needed to stay as far away from others as possible.

_**iii.**_ She never actually wrote anything on that pad of hers. It was another typical gesture of avoidance, like reading her first love letter out loud. She told Davis he couldn't stay. She'd found him through coincidence and good guesswork. Someone else could find him just as easily, and if something happened they'd both be torn to bits.  
"I'm a risk wherever I go, Chloe."  
"…I don't think my apartment would work, considering... I was thinking you should come with me to Isis. That's kind of the purpose of the place."  
"I can't go there. I can't just go into a room with other people. I might hurt somebody."  
"Isis has been closed down for almost a month. The friend who gave it to me kind of became the project. There's no steady traffic in and out of the building, and I couldn't get more tenants to come in."

_**iv. **_ "It'll be safe." So sure. He'd seen it there, the raw commitment with 'her kids' at Isis, the belief that she could help them, the pain after one of them had turned out to be a sadistic killer. He was the one person she's helping, and he thought that he'd do everything he could to do this, whatever they were attempting. It was almost easy to think he wouldn't break her heart in that hour when he felt just human.

_**v.**_ (He didn't have anything to take with him but those injections and neatly folded changes of clothes already packed in a red canvas bag.) It looked to her as if they'd been there for a week.

** II. **_She Who Seeks Shelter_  
The blood red lettering over the wall reminds her of blood, the sacred pendants entombed with pharaohs. Isis was also the Queen of the Underworld, of death. Davis can't die; he can only live, trapped and Isis is the prison of his choosing.  
(Chloe doesn't have a plan, not in the true sense of the word. He'll be down there and she'll be…around, kind of like a warden. The Queen of the Underworld, indeed.)

_**i.**_ She's careful to lock the front and basement door behind them, merely visual protections that can splinter to bits. (She doesn't let herself think of what could happen next, what she'll have to do to keep him inside.) It won't come to that.

_**ii. **_ He's got about an hour left before he takes the injections again. He barely pays attention to the look of where he's going to live. The dust on the boxes of documents, the fact that there's only one corner where he can possibly sleep. She pretends to clean ineffectually, wonders how long it'll be when until she forces him to come out with it.

_**iii.**_ There, in the half opened bag, are her excuses. She doesn't know how she'll get the drugs analyzed exactly, but it always pays to be prepared.  
"Give me." He puts the needle in her palm so fast he almost drops it. It's not subtle when he goes to the corner of the room, as far as he can from her personal space.

"Any particular reason you want to melt into the wallpaper, there?" He stiffens, and his eyes tell her the rest. "So it was a bad nightmare."  
"You died, that's not just a bad nightmare, that's..." (When she walks it's not like the construct used to, but he can't move any farther backwards and he's trapped. Two yards left between them and it hurts.)  
"My dad used to tell me that if you have dreams like that, they never ever come true." "They're frequent. The drugs cause trances and I saw you…"  
"You may have some alien stuff going on, but I don't think you're Nostradamus. You're not transforming or on meds now. Nothing will happen. I can't really help if you act like a scared rabbit."  
Her hand hovers above his and he shudders. In the dream everything didn't sound so sensible. "You've got to be okay with this." The particulars blur so he's not sure how long her hand lingers or what the exact words in what she says.  
(She had healing once and she doubts it's possible for her to be hurt; he doesn't have to shut himself off.) There's more than triumph, and something a little sad, in her smile.

iv. It's all in the small steps. When he does take the drugs, she locks the door between them. Part of it is because he doesn't want her to see him like that; part of it is because she has her own task to deal with. She wonders how he'll react to the bandages on her left palm and the paper towels soaked in blood.

_**v. **_He's the paramedic, still. When the bandages fall apart he resets them for her so they don't chafe. It's the barest touch, and it lingers like a phantom limb.

_**vi.**_ She wants to reassure him, tell him that she won't die, that he won't hurt her. Only they've never been able to keep lies between them, and the scarlet marks her like a brand. "We'll figure out something." she says.

** III.**_Lady of the Words of Power_  
She's no great lady of magic; possesses no magic touch to make this right, no abilities than will suddenly make this easy.

_**i. **_ It's been a week of looking over her shoulder every minute, telling Clark about her work with Lana, telling Jimmy nothing because he won't ask and she doesn't know what she'd answer anyway. The threads to her old life keep her in limbo, but his desperation drives her as her own. She feels locked into research and hope.  
**_  
ii._** The drugs she analyzes on the Isis computers were just that. Drugs that ought to have been fatal to any human being; that his body is resisting more every single time. The only way they could possibly work if they were something like Kryptonian viruses capable of adapting at It's own speed, like the ones that had changed Lionel Luthor; destroyed. Human drugs give him only a few weeks before time runs out. There are some sketchy research projects on DNA inactivation; where the risks outweigh the possible benefits almost ninety percent, where the Davis she knows could vanish forever just as easily as it.

_**iii.**_ No idea is worth discarding at this point. She even buys steaks, bloody and raw, as if they will satisfy Its bloodlust.

iv. The next time he blurs into her life, Clark finds her with four packages of steak in her arms. He says nothing at first; neither does she. She's perfectly aware she's been shopping for two the past weeks; and she doesn't want him to be. He pushes the cart behind her.  
"Are you alright, Chloe? You've been distant lately. Jimmy's worried. I know you need time to process, but so early after you've married, you two should really spend more time..."  
Of course that was the reason he'd always wanted to see her.  
"Thanks for the help, dear Abby. That work with Lana is more time consuming than you'd think"  
"I talked to Lana." He says. There went her alibi, but he won't just go out and say it.

She wants to be able to shock that noble look off his face, just once. Something like 'yes, Clark, I'll confess to the torrid affair.' Once she would have expected him to ask for the punch line. Now, he might actually believe her. It doesn't hurt as much as it should.  
"I want to help you, Chloe." He tells her, looks like it's actually him in pain when he doesn't ever worry if he has tomorrow. (She thinks it's become a reflex for him.)  
"We both know how that turned out, don't we?"  
_**  
v. **_ She should feel worse about it, in hindsight. Clark's been having a tough time of it lately, with discovering that not all people fawn over acts of heroism, powers like his. Linda Lake just takes it to a whole new level by turning him into something from War of the Worlds, tearing down any comfort in the life he's constructed.

_**  
vi. **_ Chloe can't be around Clark now, not when there are people calling out for blood. Not when there are just two thin doors between the world outside and Davis and her. She would feel much calmer if Linda didn't remember her at all.

**IV. ** _The Brilliant One in the Sky_  
She'd always wanted to see the carvings in the sacred temple: My veil no mortal has hereto raised. The cool stone face, at once distanced and comforting. Invulnerable. She's never been good disguising things or putting up fronts. They come up thin and flimsy and she thinks he must see through them in a minute.

_**i. **_ She used to be able to hide behind words. 'Engaged' should have been so much flimsier than 'married'. But she doesn't feel any firmer, any farther from him at all.

_**ii. **_ Despite what it might seem like, there's nothing to sneeze at; nothing at improper at all. They have been friends, have seldom touched. He still looks at her like she's at the center of everything and that's as far as it goes.  
_**  
iii. **_ She's the only one to initiate touch, at moments where she can't take the space and the gaps between. When she does hug him there is no change rippling through him, no drugs in his system. She can still feel the unsteadiness of how he draws in breaths, even as his hands come up to her back.  
_**  
iv. **_ She finds her lie in the dull look in Jimmy's face. He finally throws the word 'affair' out as a challenge as she packs the lunches one morning. (She disappears for stretches at a time; he knows she's not thinking of him as she sleeps, there's something about her that he doesn't understand.) Her eyes feels raw but she looks at him steadily until he stabs his fork angrily into his omelet. "I don't know you." He says. She knows he's right.

_**v. **_ (She's lost her capacity to lie to herself. She doesn't deny that she feels that pull toward Davis, like gravity. There's a mix of desire, comfort and protectiveness that she never tries to define; that she can't voice because that's not who they are.)  
_**  
vi. **_ Maybe she's always known that she was in as deep in this as he was. Davis spends more and more of his time in a haze of pain, and those moments he is with her everything has a purpose and she feels like she has something. For a little while.  
_**  
vii.**_ She won't deny the feelings, something all at once more and less complicated anything she ever felt for Clark. She thinks 'affair' is an ugly word, exactly the Jimmy would see it if he could.

** V. **_Mistress of the House of Life_  
(He lives in a room that's like a box, but everything about his life is more normal than he can remember. )  
_**  
i. **_ She forces him to eat, plays music by Bach and Handel, draws him out. All of this, in some hope that it'll keep him human.

_**ii.**_ It's easy to remember to have faith in his humanity when she lingers everywhere in his conscience. It's the details, how she tucks a pen behind her ear, drops references a mile a minute, reaches out when he least expects it.

_**iii. **_ They talk plans; she lines up every outlandish idea that can possibly be of help. He watches when she stacks piles and piles of research texts on each other and he catches them before they topple. No one else will have these moments, for however long they last.  
_**  
iv.**_ Even when she's gone, she keeps an old red jacket hanging over the couch, a scent he recognizes. It's easy to close his eyes, fall into the deception. She's not his. She's married, and he doesn't have the right to thoughts like that. Right or wrong, these are the memories he calls on when it begins.

_**v. **_ She's never seen him change. He can't be sure what is quite real with the drugs, what he really sees versus what happens. But sometimes he feels it sparking of some parts of him, an arm flickering with spines; worse the thick heaviness in the back of his skull. He tries, squeezes his eyes shut, goes to a good memory, and remembers that some nights she sleeps with her back to the door.

_**vi. **_ Pain is better than the oblivion. The drugs don't cause him quite so much pain now, leave in their wake curiously blank moments to infringe on him, when his mind feels like its going, floating off into oblivion.

_**vii. **_ It starts out small increments-seconds lost, minutes. He doesn't think he changes, stays in his place and she's been safe so far. Oblivion is what he fears most, no conscious control, no pain. If he lets go, these are the moments when he could easily become a monster in human form; when he can't control what his body will do.

** VI. **_Moon Shining Over the Sea_  
She'll have to make a choice soon; cut ties with one world or the other because she can't live in both. When she does it, everything will change. The world will be turned on its head, and she won't be swayed by what used to be her life.

_**i. **_ Lois. Clark. Jimmy. They were her life, once. They can't always be. Soon, she thinks. Soon. Not just yet.  
_**  
ii. **_ She leaves the foundation for a trip with Lois, a girl's night out. Lois is cross at the farm boy again for reasons unknown, but they make it a pact not to speak of anything important. It's just time with where she is just Lois's cuz, time she wishes she had to give.

_**iii.**_ Things don't go as planned. They end up walking on their own through ugly, un-crowded streets, two girls in impractical shoes. Easy targets for a couple of thugs. She ducks and weaves ungracefully; wallops one with her purse. Lois incapacitates the other with a pair of heels. Stilettos; perfectly fierce…  
_**  
iv. **_ That becomes Lois's plan, something to draw attention away from Clark. A dramatic description of her superhuman prowess, a few exaggerations should do the job; maybe even stall the front page. Maybe she won't ever say it out, but Clark is the center of her life.

_**v. **_ Chloe thinks that that was her once. (When she drops her as the anonymous source in her latest column, Lois thinks it still is.)

_**vi. **_ Clark and Lois, Jimmy…They have each other. They'll be alright. And she has him. (Chloe thinks she is ready now.)  
**  
I. **  
_Regardless of what she said, she never really understood Isis; never understood the counseling, what her role meant. But she's living it now. It's unavoidable how it all merges; shapes her into the girl who's willing to go to the ends of the earth. The one who's going to open that door and face it all.  
Life, love, home and death.  
Isis. She thinks she almost understands the name. _  
She who makes the Right Use of the Heart.

* * *

_**Endnotes: **__  
__(With Spoilers)_Yes, Chloe's choice was to tell Davis about her epiphany. But she gets intercepted.  
Also I buried some hints for what leads to Davis acting the way he does in _Infamous_. It gets darker. Do you see it?

_(Layout Stuff)_ The header titles are descriptions of Isis from the Book of the Dead. Just ask and I will give you deep meanings.

I have the next part practically finished. A hint. The title is _Crucible_. Deals with *that even which shall or shall not be named*. Fine. The feeding thing which you may not expect.  
Chock loads of angst. A big change between Chloe and Davis.  
I won't anything about the part after the next part. You can assume it exists though.

What do you want to see? What do you ee now? Do tell. I'm all ears. It helps with the task of writing loads. ;)


	4. crucible

_**Crucible-**__ a vessel used for heating, melting and shaping materials at high temperatures._

* * *

She had seen birth and death before and thought them to be different.  
T.S. Eliot, Journey of the Magi

* * *

**I.** _Chloe Sullivan is focused on the here and now. She's almost stopped thinking of danger outside of her little world.  
_

i. She lets herself in with the key around her neck, two enormous green apples balanced precariously on the tray.

ii. Davis should be out of the trance by now. She'd told him to take a walk outside, just for a little while. The time he can go without a shot is down to forty five minutes, but he knows she worries about the worrisome pallor that constant hours in the dark have brought to his skin.

iii. She doesn't have a hand to turn up the light. Shutters are drawn, but she can make out the vague form of the pile of reference texts toppled messily into her path. She'll deal with it later. No hands.

iv. She has hands enough to send the tray flying behind her when she feels the cool pressure of a knife at her throat. It doesn't help, leaves her completely unarmed, arms pinioned to her sides. She has to stand on her toes to keep the sharpness from slicing into her trachea.

v. The smell is stifling and dirty, too hot breath and tobacco. "Care to introduce me to your little friend?" A voice that sounds like yesterday's liquor. It's not about Davis. Can't be about him. She's been careful.

v. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do. Word on the street tells me you can hook me up with a nuisance called Stiletto."

"Hate to break it to you buster, but if you're looking to score some shoes this isn't the way to go about it."

"Stop lying, bitch. Your little friend. Where is she?"

"All I know is that you are a demented Jack-the-Ripper wannabe. Let me go!"  
A kick to his shin and he makes no reaction but tightening his grip.

"I'm in the position of power here, you may notice."

She watched a video about how to defend from a man holding a knife. To poke him in the eyes was the big thing, but she can't move her fingers without breaking them. She can't knee him, trapped like this. She should turn his weight against him, but she doesn't know anything other than verbal judo.

vi. "Let me go and I might decide not to send you to prison for assault."  
"One question and it can all be over."

"I don't know anything." More pressure. Her neck is cold; the feeling is liquid like a few drops of blood.

"Let me refresh your memory. You've been coming this way with lots of food; every single day for the past week. Little lady like you couldn't eat that much. So, I'm thinking we might be pretty close to that friend of yours."  
"Maybe I have an appetite."  
"I don't like wasting time. Next time you lie, I make you bleed it out." He doesn't tighten the knife anymore, presses one corner down more firmly than the rest of it and she won't heal from that.

vii. She's got to survive now.  
"I'll take you to her."  
"That's better." The knife encircles her neck from the back now and she walks stiffly.  
"What's in it for me?"  
"I might decide not to slice you up too bad." She considers tripping, taking him down for a few seconds. But he's been here longer and she can see less than he can in this dark. She finds the knob, pushes in the key. Her hand wants to start trembling. But she stiffens, pulls it open. "You first." He's going to push her ahead of him, walk one step above her. She won't be able to lock him in or get away.

vii. She walks down one step, another, a third; he moves heavily behind her. The fourth step she jerks her head down, nearly smacks it on the rail, crouches. The momentum throws him forward and she scrambles to throw herself behind the heavy wood, turns the key, tries to block out the sounds of his body hitting the cement.

viii. She might not have killed him, she thinks. She's injured him, badly and she can't afford to stay and wait. She's got minutes to find Davis outside, pack a few texts; they'll go on the lam somehow, where they can't be found. It'll be the end of her life as Chloe Sullivan.

ix. (She can't have killed him. _She can't have_.)

x. She thinks she's done worse than that when she hears that sound for the second time in her life.

* * *

**II. **She doesn't know how she keeps behind the door for the seconds until the human sound smothers and there's nothing at all.

i. He'd made her promise. There's another thirty minutes, painstakingly counted out before she pulls it open.

ii. There's nothing on the stairs, and there's no body at the bottom of the steps. She can see ripped fabric first, knows whatever is left of the thug will confront her as soon as she gets down. She did this, forced Davis into everything he never wanted to be again.

iii. (Maybe the transformation won't be over. She can die now, just like anybody else.)

iv. Davis will be down there and he's going to wake up with blood on him. She pushes the trembling down and tries not to see what she does.

v. They're both tossed on the cement, equally caked in it; only one of them is breathing. Davis is not aware yet. She pulls what's left of the other together, isolates, and doesn't drag for fear of leaving marks. Brings bags; thick and black to bind it up. Her green suit jacket is a study in contrasts.

vi. She's still scrubbing at her hands when he wakes.

* * *

**III.** His consciousness passes from white to shades of black; the scent around him is all too familiar. He isn't this, he won't be and the evidence is coating him, taunting. _This is all he can be._

i. He can almost taste the sickly sweet, dizzying emptiness it leaves in its wake. He wants to double over the sink and make it go. But she's there, back to him. She should never have to see. He pushes himself back toward the wall; finds it covered too.

ii. He doesn't know who the hapless victim was this time. It has finally caught up to him and things between them will never be the same again.

iii. Her shoulders move, releasing barely hitching breaths obscured by the run of water. She's holding so much back and she's seen. (It's one thing to hear it from his lips, to decide logically that she wants to save him. This was never in the cards and he can't expect…)

iv. "Chloe?" His hands are crusted brown and the familiar sickly nausea won't ebb. It isn't pushing at his mind, and he knows what it all means. She doesn't turn toward him and he doesn't blame her.

v. He doesn't see anyone else; doesn't remember anything since the last injection. Her sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, and the blood is on her too.

vi. The things start to piece themselves together, and he doesn't want to believe. In those lost minutes he could have looked liked himself, been It…done things. Hurt her.

vii. She wouldn't turn toward him if she had been hurt. "Chloe. What did I…" he steadies her elbows, pulls her around gently. She doesn't jump at the light pressure; she as pliant as a life-size doll. No bruises on her arms. He almost startles when her head buries itself onto what's left of his shirt. "Oh god. I'm sorry." He thinks she's trying to say, and doesn't understand.

viii. The floor around him is almost spotless and he drips onto it. His hands were once talons, so he doesn't think of how it got to soak up to his elbows.

ix. "We'll get you cleaned up." The sink runs, sputters out icy water. There are towels. More than the time when she got that scar.

x. She speaks, the words come out and he thinks that she's still trying to distract herself. Her touch is gentle, and he closes his eyes for the minute it lasts. The water flows pinkish as it comes off his neck, his arms; his face.

* * *

**IV.** They tell you jokingly that true friends help you hide the bodies. Both of them may have had true friends and false friends and none would be here now. There's something else to this.

i. There are the black bags, too familiar, which they move. The smell of death is everywhere and he tries to push down the very human nausea. He's lived as a paramedic and he's felt this before, she hasn't and yet she stays.

ii. Its savagery, something worse than a mauling is not something fit for her eyes. All because he's not capable, strong enough.  
"Don't, Davis." She throws all the authority she can in her voice and it still comes out shaky. "It was me."

iii. A minute passes, two, in silence. He knows the hidden horror because he's had it, feels it even now because he doesn't feel pity with it. "He was going to kill you."

iv. (He used to believe life was equally important; no one meant more than anyone else. Maybe this is the start of him, changing. But this is Chloe and he wonders how many of the tenets of his life break when it comes to her).

v. "So I beat him to the punch. I told myself I was going to knock him down the steps and lock him down here just while we got away…And instead I made a stupid mistake, used you as a weapon. I was supposed to stop this."

vi. She almost retches twice through their morbid task; but keeps on methodically despite the speed. She never thought that she would use the knowledge from books on forensics, a viewing or two of Dexter, this way.

vii. They have only forty-five minutes and she watches him for all the little signs she's gotten to know so well. He's on tenterhooks but he's not going to let her on her own, still worried for her even though she just murdered a man.

viii. She's no saint. When they finish she won't be the one to keep her mouth shut.

* * *

**  
V.** His time is up and he waits for the change that doesn't come.

i. The fact that it got free buys him time; it's no longer moving restlessly in the back of his skull, fighting against its bonds. He may have a whole night free of the change to see what it has done.

ii. Under Clorox and stinging antiseptic, the room is still redolent of the sickening scent. It's completely changed, killed in this room now. He used to picture days upon days of drugs where it didn't break free; tried so hard to believe it was not a lie.

iii. She's stayed safe, somehow, because of blind luck, because of its first victim. He's learned not to trust luck. It could snap past that barrier next time, it could be her blood staining his hands, her eyes.

iv. No matter what he does, this always seems to follow and he wants to tear both parts of himself from the other before it's too late. If he can't do it, maybe the other Kryptonian can.

v. (Despite the fact that they've been on the outs lately, Clark might be strong enough to stop him somehow, find away to neutralize the threat before she gets into the crossfire. The one who'd called himself her best friend owes her that much.)

vi. He's been excellent at lying to himself so far, but she won't be the casualty. "You've seen it now. It can't get better." He won't sugarcoat things, not now. He hasn't told her about the white outs, where he doesn't feel pain or drugs or it; where he thinks it's adapting, trying and seizing control of his rational mind

vii. "How do I know that it won't be you laying there next time?" She can't come up with an infallible answer. He's Davis; and he's fighting.

viii. Another barrier broken and it'll keep pushing itself past its restraints. He's not strong enough. She refuses to believe.

ix. "I'm going to try and live up to that. When I go this time you've got to let me go and not look for me."

* * *

**VI**. It is not a matter of digging in her heels and waiting until one of them topples. He's got to _see_.

i. "Were you listening to anything I said? You don't get to punish yourself for my mistakes." There's the bag still red and the blood is hardly visible. "It's killed again." The taste of blood will bring it out again faster.

ii. "It doesn't matter where you go, don't you see? You don't get to do this, play the noble hero card. Not now." She tugs the luggage from his hands and he lets it fall. He won't need it where he's going.

iii. (He's making excuses to watching her face even tinged in anger. This is their moment, and for the first time he realizes it's not that only that she cares. Inexplicably, she needs him, too.)

iv. "Fine. You want to hear something? I opened the door too early. Fifteen minutes too early. Do I look dead to you?" She looks straight, challenges; doesn't tell him he was human at the time. Omission is truth when the situation calls for it. "If you leave it's because you want to, not because of me. So don't."

v. (He used to like logic. Probability, the things he could measure. The numbers are against him and he's not going to gamble.)

vi. It's a principle. She can't let him go and he can't let her be hurt. Go. Go. If he says it out he knows she won't move, will let the door close behind him. "Do you want to go?" He'd have weeks left before the memories would start to fade again. "I-" He doesn't want to think about how much it will be like tearing apart.

vii. "Don't, Davis." It's not a command and her face is opened up, like light that vanishes when she sees his hand on the door. Maybe, he thinks, he's hurting her already. There's no Clark, no Lois, no Jimmy for her now. She'll be alone in a room with too many ghosts. "No." It wavers on the edge of his breath, almost defiant.

viii. She's Chloe Sullivan; she's got a sure-fire remark for every minute and the words are clumsy, conceal and reveal too much. (She wants to say how everything else has almost gone away; how this little room has become her life, now.) "I trust you." He's the only one. She wishes he could trust in himself; that he didn't have to ask 'why'. She wants to intercept the words before they leave his mouth, about how she can care when he's 'this' because he isn't.

ix. There's no evidence she can give for instinct, so she finally falls back on the one thing that's already been said. "I think you know why." She used to mock lines like that, repeated in countless tired romances as the music swelled. The cheesiness of the moment does not escape her but he looks as if she gave him the world. (Maybe it's not the words as much as the fact that they can't be taken back, the fact that she doesn't want to.)

x. He's doesn't listen to the words as much as the way she says them and he understands. The gap closes. Words want to build in the back of his throat, how there are things she still needs to know, so many things that can't possibly be easy.

xi. This is the second time it happens and he's not prepared for it. She moves first. Her lips are on his and the soft sensation is insistent, hiding under the surface, mirrored. He can taste bitter coffee, her, blood from the split on her lip. His hands are tight on her shoulders; she's breakable. He draws back and loosens his grip, tries to breathe. He's never wanted to smile more than now.

xii. She's still looking at him with that expression, seeing more than he manages to say. The aching returns, a slow nervous flutter (she burns the white and black from the back of his mind until there's just her image in his eyes). There's a cut on her jaw that he's careful to avoid when he frames her face. He kisses her and he's nothing if not human. Not yet.

* * *

**VII.** And it's just that easy.

i. Davis is not pushing her, fingers barely tangled in her hair. He kisses constantly, opened mouth meeting hers with no intrusion of tongue. Pulling her to him, holding on. There's intensity to everything that makes it hard to breathe. She stretches up, clutches to his shoulders. She can have this. He's here, regardless of what this could have done, what she could have lost. Even with her eyes closed she's aware of that one purple stain stark against her sleeve; drops her jacket onto the floor. She tells herself this hasn't made her reckless. The goose bumps form on her arms and when his hands slide up her shoulders she feels it more than she should. Her skin is vulnerable and safe. (They go on, and she knows where this leads.)

ii. She manages to hold on, arching into him, unable to think further than this impossible 'now'. She forgets about visions of scrubbing her hands, the knot in her stomach that lingers like fear. She can't afford to forget, not…  
"Not here." She chokes out.  
It feels too much like a portent, and she can't take that. Not when she needs them to be just them. She can't make the rest of it go away, and maybe she doesn't know what she's playing at; but she believes. Steadies her breath, opens her eyes into his, shakily draws a thumb across his cheek. "Come with me."

iii. His eyes are dark in the light, there's fear there, but less, and a word about the danger doesn't leave his lips. Don't, she'd said. He's so open and trusting and she hates that she could break him. There's the danger there, but there's him too. She won't give moth to flame allegories. Right now he's the man, and her friend and the one thing she won't let go of. It's built so far down it's her foundation. She's making this choice sober. She links her fingers though his, tries not to look at the steps as she walks, focuses on the warmth of his grip. Somehow she propels them, up and away, out of the dark.

iv. It's brighter here, even with one of the light bulbs knocked out, sobering. She's taking that step out to the ledge for the first time. It's never felt like her skin was anymore than that; when physical sensation could ever change her.

v. She'd kept herself on a pill, a habit, although time passed and there was no need. She remembers how it used to be, sometimes pleasant and sometimes numb, never with the lights on. So she could pretend that it couldn't have been any face but hers, so he never saw when her thoughts went to another place. (Maybe the hesitant, old Chloe would feel guilty for this, for the once-husband called Jimmy and a nightstand with a wedding ring laid out there.)

vi. But not her, not when the things she's already said feel more like vows than anything she ever remembers. So she keeps leading, looks into his face. His fingers clutch onto hers. He won't ever voice the fear now, not when he's afraid of hurting her. She wants to give him reassurance; wants to tell him that they can have this always and he won't break her heart. Instead, she lets herself feel the fear until it vanishes to him.  
She pretends it is the first time.

* * *

**VIII.** They never say the words out between them.

i. She doesn't say and he doesn't ask, and he hopes she understand what he means to. She pulls at his hands. The couch, too red, symbolic; there's no where else to go in this room.  
ii. He doesn't know what the custom for this is, it's normal to be caught like this, like two teenagers. It's just what people do.

iii. But he isn't 'people'. He used to dream of another world, another time where they could have been this. Where feeling could come first and he'd repeat phrases like 'I love you' over and over.

iv. As it is, they have only hours. Maybe they can't go on like this, a guy only gets so many second chances before the door shuts; and she can't go throwing herself to his salvation when it may only break her. But he can't stop, not when he sees the question in her eyes. There's fear, and he thinks he has it too. He can be anything for her now, this moment. She feels like his.

v. Her knees hit the arm of the couch, he does and when she makes a sound it knocks the wind out of him. He doesn't know what his invulnerable body could do to her. His skin shatters knives. Even his human weight could crush her. He quickly pulls his weight off. "Are you?" "Just cold." She makes a tiny discontented sound and lunges forward to pull him back with her. He hesitates.

vi. He can't help seeing the marks on lightly tanned skin, the bruise over her breastbone; the deeper jagged cut under her chin.  
"We should look at that." It's a reflex, how he traces the outside of the mark, gauging the severity.  
"Mr.-uhh… got a bit knife-happy." If she hadn't been coming here for him, she wouldn't have gotten hurt.  
"Stop that. He came because of a project of Lois's. He wanted to find her and I wouldn't tell him."  
"How'd he find out?"  
"Word on the streets. You know reporters." He knows what that means. Some soft justification, like 'Lois just forgot to say I was the source.' Lois could have gotten Chloe killed. He can feel the whiteness again, seizing up; wanting to tear through something.  
He squeezes his eyes shut, thinks of climbing off and locking the door. Her voice draws him out of visions of paralysis and scarlet mist.  
"Hey, I'm still here." She draws his hand to her chin. "See? You won't hurt me."

vii. It's a contradiction. He's the one with the psychotic monster in him and he'll hurt her if he goes. Don't. "So give a girl a little help?" Her lips are swollen, her face is flushed but it's all pushed behind the gentle look in her eyes. He wonders for a moment if it will ever see what he sees at this moment; if it can download these memories. She leans forward, brushes her lips across the side of his mouth. It has no place here. "It's hot and all, but don't think so much, Davis."

viii. He braces himself against the sides of the couch, leans down because it must hurt her to angle like that. Sensations. Her thin shirt rides up a little and his hand stumbles she keeps it there. It barely skims flesh because one misstep could leave a bruise. He wants to take it farther, feels the prickle under his skin, the need for warmth, her. The only place she's safe is where his skin doesn't touch hers.

ix. He doesn't know what he's asking for. But she responds; flips them over so that he almost thinks she learned one of those Japanese wrestling disciplines. She's half kneeling at either side of him this time and the burning pushes anything but those sounds and monosyllabic thoughts from his mind. Pulling away, coming back; teasing. Legs at the side of his hips effectively trapping him before his hands tug her down again. Sounds that she doesn't realize she makes. It's physically painful to come this close and not merge.

x. He's breathing faster now, strangely reminiscent of the change, but so, so different. She doesn't look scared. Just throws various articles haphazardly behind her with the arm that's not touching him. He's still mostly dressed. The hands on the buttons of his serviceable cotton shirt don't shake until barely calloused palms brush the pulse on his neck.

xi. The rough materials rub between them, strangely unneeded barriers that seem to shed sparks as they get kicked away. Red leather, cold as it sticks to his back. Then, a shock of skin and he realizes the air is making her cold. She draws closer and they are actually doing this. "Chloe, promise you'll tell me if…" "I will stop your mouth." It should be out of the place, this; the way she nearly laughs, pulls out old Shakespearean references like they have time. "Just let it happen."

xii. Blond hair teases at his cheek as everything freezes. Warmth and heat, and he won't shut his eyes. The first hesitant movement together and it feels like he's sinking into his skin, just his human skin and there's nothing else. This moment of oneness is all they have; and he feels her heartbeat over him. He feels himself drifting, moving to nowhere and everywhere.

xiii. He wants it to stay, but the movements get wilder, his pulse races in something akin to desperation. It's dangerous to hold on to tightly, and this is going to have to end. "Davis." Her eyes flicker open and closed and there's sweat damp on her temple. He feels the tightening, can read the signs. "Wait." He says. He reaches up, breathes her air; pretends this is not an end. Kisses her with every breath left. Finds himself pushed deeper, feels the trembling overtake them and then doesn't know of the cry is his or her own.

xiv. He's spiraling back, feeling the sweat growing cold on both of them. He rolls them over carefully in the small space and they barely manage to stay on, limbs tangled over the edge of the couch. His nose somehow brushes her neck and she shivers so that the movement goes through him.

xv. When everyday physical sensations return he finds the afghan, always thrown haphazardly over the chair arm, unfurls it and pulls it over her shoulders. Rumpled hair, a tired warm smile. "Hey." It's in the little things, how she smoothes back hair that is too short to need it, the quickness of emotions that play across her face. He thinks she must see it to. Something clenches in his gut, and he can't help the smile. This is everything.

xvi. The afghan scratches lightly, and her head rests on his arm. There are soft words, theoretical questions set in a world that has a future for both of them. And he lets himself fall.

xvii. An hour, two; her breaths fall evenly against his chest and time and place realign. There's a giddy joy dizzying him, mixing with the all too familiar fear. (He wonders how it can ever return after this. He knows it will.)

xviii. Time will pass whether he clings or not. He won't be able to be without her; and before the end he'll have to let her go. He holds in the convulsing need to pull her closer, to hold on with desperate fingers to sand. He unclenches his fingers, presses a cheek to the top of her head; waits until the dawn. (He's not anything but human, not now.) _Not now._

* * *

**IX.** Her dreams cloud her eyes with blood she's spilled and tears. It's still an unpleasant jolt to wake.

i. The sun filters in, shines uncomfortably in her eyes without warming her. The leathery texture of the couch feels cold without his warmth; and she feels that strange blooming of feeling that makes her want to hang on to him.

ii. She realizes they won't ever be able to sleep together, side by side.

iii. The afghan is tucked carefully around her shoulders, even now and his scent lingers on her skin. Then, the thought hits her that there's no trace of him.

iv. After the initial panic, she notices her clothes are neatly folded over the coffee table and the key dangles in the basement lock, ready to be turned. It'll be two hours before she opens it again.

v. It's illogical that she doesn't feel guiltier, more frightened. Soon it will crest on her, what all of this means.

vi. The dreams tell her things that she can't bring herself to accept yet. There's dirt under her fingernails and somewhere out there there's a fresh grave.

vii. They aren't safe at Isis any longer. She finds a map, draws out a path, thinks of Alaska and tries to reason out how they'll handle the car ride.

viii. The signs are all down now. So it shocks her to find a small business card shoved under the crack of the door. Who leaves calling cards these days, anyways?

ix. Linda Lake. She'd failed in her destruction mission of Clark and now she wanted fuel for the fire. The hasty, ugly scrawl on the back. Appointment?

x. Two more hours left.

**I. **_Chloe Sullivan can't just see the here and now. There's the future because she has to believe in it. There is a future because this is her whole little world now._

* * *

_**Endnotes:** _To clear up any confusion here, no I'm not done yet and there's still quite a bit to be dealt with.  
Linda Lake smothering much? Oliver and Jimmy? And what those white outs are that are happening to Davis. Oh and if they do manage to get out of Smallville before something really bad happens.  
Any more confusions, just shoot them and I will explain.  
So, so what do you think?


	5. torque

_Next part. not the ending, I repeat, not the ending._

_**

* * *

****Torque-**_ _a force that causes a rotation around a central point.._

* * *

**I. **_(Her father used to tell her that half a battle was presentation. The best gamblers knew how to bluff and bluff well, how to never let their opponents know that anything was the matter.) Maybe that's why she never played; Chloe couldn't ever help but see the stakes. _

i. Just a year ago Linda Lake had tried to kill her with a nail gun and now she is leaving business cards underneath her door.

ii. (Chloe doesn't know exactly how Linda Lake got back. There had been a car accident, she'd read. Linda Lake had been a casualty; they'd found what had to be her remains. Maybe she'd escaped again, through some trick of chance. Maybe she lost her powers. Maybe she had died and come back. Among meteor freaks, things like death are relative.)

iii. In the end all that matters is that Linda has found her, and that she's watching her like a rat in a cage. She won't come in. That's not her style. She expects her to run, so Chloe needs to do the opposite of what she anticipates, be like any normal girl with a live in boyfriend.

iv. Linda Lake already has her little army of listeners, her ammo trained on Clark, so that he can't move without being monitored or watched; accused of being a monster. She may just be lacking a few more nails for his coffin.

v. Chloe has no illusions that this is a sincere request. (Linda had known that Chloe would commit felonies without blinking for her best friend; that she'd never help dig his grave knowingly.) She couldn't have known about the mind wipe, or anything else to change that.

vi. The deal with Stiletto had vanished as soon as it had come.

vii. Chloe doesn't want to think about the last option, about something to do with Davis. Maybe the drugs, the missing person thing, the investigation… any of those could have tipped her off.

viii. Linda is by no means a clever adversary, but she'd find out given the time.

ix. (With Linda Lake the well won wisdom is for Chloe to dig in her heels, play right out of her hands, because there is nothing she can do to her without hurting those she cares about.) And Linda can. She can do so much.

x. That's just why they won't be staying.

**II. **_"In an honest game, you aren't scared to turn your cards up." he used to say. (It didn't matter if the stakes were against you, if maybe there was no way to win.) You accepted that; played them to the very end._

i. Linda Lake can't be listening in this time. Chloe knows Davis has been up all night and he would have noticed water trickling under the front door.

ii. Chloe doesn't try to mute the sounds of drawers slamming, finishes packing in twenty minutes; that leaves her an unhealthy expanse of time to struggle to block out the sound of the clock. She pulls things out from under the coffee table, burning what little mail she has, anything that could be a sign of their passing. She automatically slips the worn Bible covered with brown paper into the bottom of her bag.

iii. Two hours. The steps and floor gleam unnaturally with cleanness but she can still visualize the phantom stains. There was the trash bag with her ruined shoes and clothing; all gone as if they never existed.

iv. But it's not clean and it won't ever be. She won't be able to rent this place out in good faith.

v. It is still as dark as it was last night. She gets the bizarre idea that maybe everything was just a dream and no time passed at all. Nightmares and all, she doesn't want it to be.

vi. He's in the corner by the only wall that they haven't had to mop up. His shoulders shift as soon as she moves into the room. "Morning, Davis." Her voice is uncharacteristically rough, and she tries to grasp other words to say.

vii. Intimacy changes relationships; she's heard the warning hundreds of times. She hasn't really thought about this. (With the one limited experience with the morning after she had; no one had been around to talk.)

viii. The corner of his mouth quirks up just a little and he makes an effort to relax his customary huddle, arms around his knees, back to the wall so she won't worry. She realizes that she's not the only one to see phantom stains. (Maybe intimacy is looking at someone and knowing.)

ix. When she holds him she can smell the vague stinging of cleaners on his shirt. He rubs her back unconsciously, just like they started out, him comforting her on the pretense of it being the other way around. Maybe his grip is a little closer, but they've been far, far closer than that in so many ways.

x. "Hey, you okay? You know, all creepy nightmares in the shadows excluded?" (He's spent hours in this.) If she wants to forget he must want to vanish.

xi. He just murmurs an unconvincing affirmation in her ear and she realizes that he won't do anything else unless she wants him to. Wait. He'd come into this fully prepared for it to be the last time. And she thought she was the one with issues.

xii. (She wishes there was a way to deal with this, quantifiably and certainly. She won't tell him that she can never be the type of girl to get things out of her system because he knows that.)

xiii. She draws back, palms on his shoulders, no clutching this time. It happens, he leans in softly, not too far, not too forceful. Maybe there's that same desperation mixed with everything else, but hopeless doesn't feel like this. Her insides feel like a curious ball of unresolved frustration and mush.

xiv. "I missed you." She can joke now, tell him how there are some benefits to having a personal heater, tease him about missing the charming mortal invention called pillow talk. His face is stripped bare and it stops her.

xv. (There's still the vague fission of nervousness, because so much has changed and nothing and she's at the brink all over again.) But the choice is not jumping off the ledge that first time, but learning to land over and over again.

xvi. "I want this-I want you." It's not 'this moment' but 'however long we've got'. Not the exact words. He holds her tighter and breathes. Close enough.

**III. **_The Ace of Clubs is the strongest card in the deck, the one that brings together all the other cards, the one that can very well turn the odds in your favor. It's more than a little ironic that it's the card of death, too. _

i. "We have to leave." She says.

ii. Some woman is leaving the equivalent of polite death threats under the door, and Chloe doesn't shrink back from the why of it. But he can see the tension through her, hiding behind her self-deprecating expression.

iii. Of course, Clark and Lois are locked in their little world of reporters and camera flashes, purposefully blind. He wonders if they even see their role in this.

iv. So it's just the both of them, he and Chloe, their little world preparing to fall apart. And she wants them to get away.

v. He can see it already. Driving in the dark, her completely trusting before the white wipes any trace of him from his brain. "We can't."

vi. "Not that again. See, I've worked it all out. Two hour rides, I drive. We'll rent apartments and you can take the medications. It should take us three weeks to get over the border." He's not the only one with painful hope.

vii. "There's more to it than that, Chloe. I'm losing so much time that I can't remember half the time I'm supposed to be awake now." He keeps talking because he has to get it out before she responds, contradicts him, makes it all sound so reasonable.

viii. "You can't just run from the big monster because I might look like this. I think it might be taking me over." "So it wants to merge with you, but you're not transforming. It's not exactly made to be stealthy. That doesn't make sense." "What I am doesn't make sense." "We'll argue about this later. You have got to eat. Come on, up with you." They fit, the way she loops her shoulder under his, as if he is injured. His bones can't break, and he can't bleed, but he feels almost frail.

ix. He used to think could save her from whatever was in him, that when worst came to worst he'd manage to it somehow. Now that means leaving her to the mercy of everything out there, isolated. That's no choice at all.

x. (He thinks that even before that she's carved her place in him, now. She's everything in him that holds Davis together, part of him, closer than the touch of skin. Maybe it happened somewhere in between 'don't' and 'I want this'. He can't take Chloe from him any more than he can tear unbreakable flesh.)

xi. There's little more than a wide bowl of chips and pasta sauce for breakfast. He's forcing himself to eat. She only manages to get two teaspoons of it down her throat before she gives up. She never noticed the viscosity, the ugly brilliant scarlet of it before.

xii. "If you haven't come out from behind that door how bad could it be? Maybe you just can't move, and you go into shock from fighting against it." "I don't know what's happening. It could be anything at all." She understands that, how he needs to control, to know especially when it comes to her. "It could be nothing, too."

xiii. "We're in more danger if we say here. Linda will have no trouble leading her loyal troupe to our door…"  
"So you're afraid that…"  
"Afraid doesn't even start to cover it. I spent some time in one of those places. You know how you read about those experiments in second World War, where they considered imperfect people perishable experiments? Well, in places like you aren't human, no matter how harmless. They want you to feel as much pain as you can, they want to watch as the meteors push their way through and you heal so they can start it over again. I learned more about death than I wanted to know. There's worse, places like Bella Reeve."  
It would just tear it down.  
"Sure, then they'd find that you'd be the perfect super weapon. They'd lock you inside of it and what they'd make you do would destroy you completely."  
She lets the fork clatter into the plate, drops the pretense of conversation.  
"And that's not going to happen. You hear me? It's not."

xiv. There are two eggs in the refrigerator. She wonders how long they'll hold out. "You need to get out of here for a little while."  
"I think we have enough for tonight, if you don't mind chicken soup."  
"You look like you want be sick."  
"And I should. It better make me sick every day for the rest of my life because if it doesn't, I'm not me, anymore."

xv. Somehow he gets her to do it 'for him'. "Don't open the door for anyone. Not Clark, not Lois..." They haven't visited her since she left Jimmy, but there's no reason to let her guard down. "Okay." He helps her clear the half full dishes on the table. It still worries her, leaving him alone like this. Maybe this is what it's like to get clingy.

xvi. She hesitates and it isn't pity. Her eyes don't lie and she can stand to squeeze his shoulder that way, when half of the time it's not even skin. She's so willing to hold onto him that she'll grab onto danger with both hands. She doesn't change her mind easily.

xvii. She's as close to hunted as she can be without fleeing. She won't be alone in this. Human, he can be that buffer, keep her safe.

xviii. "I'll be fine." He says. It takes half an hour until the flickers of white start push their way through.

**IV. **_Gabe used to hand Chloe the jokers before they shuffled the deck, because they never played with them. Jokers turn a game on its head in an instant, make you look at it in a whole different way. _

i. Oliver Queen understands the difference between caution and foolhardiness. It was cautious to warn Linda Lake, persuade her to stop dragging names out. It became foolhardy, perhaps, when she seemed to know so much more than what she was using. (She'd laughed at him, dropped a few allusions to double lives and that crack about never revealing her sources.)

ii. It was clear enough. Chloe, if turned to her side, could break down everything.

iii. He doesn't come in as the Green Arrow. The complex is mostly abandoned but some guy in a green spandex walking out in the daylight will still be noticed.

iv. It's easy enough to deal with the lock, but the darkness bothers his eyes. There are no photographs or negatives hidden in unobtrusive places. Like no ones been living in there at all.

v. The lights flick on and the paramedic is in the room. Oliver can't rein in the instinct to turn sharply, but doesn't jump, he never jumps. It's been years since he's been caught.

vi. "What are you doing here?" The man had saved his life, but he's being searched for on charges of murder.

vii. He doesn't speak. It's not theft, because the negatives are his in a manner of speaking. He has a right to them. They're his.

viii. It makes perfect, twisted sense. Of course he would blackmail Chloe into keeping him here; of course he would catch Oliver getting his own blackmail back.

ix. That's simple enough to deal with. He's a civilian. A few aikido hits is all it will take. Two of his best moves, and there's no expression on the medics face. Oliver's hand aches, like the last time he (tried) to hit Clark.

x. The wall is unyielding, against the back of his skull, a little harder than necessary to inflict real pain. He suspects that its only control that keeps him from smashing out the side.

xi. The Green Arrow has nothing but a lock pick. He thinks irony's a *****.

**V.**_Longtime gamblers may know every nick and bend in that pack of cards. You expect them him to know their secrets, but they don't. If it all comes down to numbers, how do they win? You try not to think 'intuition', but you do._

i. It's been almost an hour. The clawing fear in her stomach should mean nothing. (Fate, predestination, omens stopped meaning anything a long time ago.)

ii. But she's lived every day of her life with the weird and unexplained. Her hand goes automatically to her phone, dials Isis. Two and a half rings.

iii. "Davis." His voice sounds wrong, like he's being squeezed.  
"Oliver's here."  
"What's he doing there?" No answer. Of course he hadn't come over for tea. She had those negatives, her little wall between her little world and accused murderess, the knot that bound her to the whole mess.  
He knew. He knew now.  
"You've got to let him go. Davis?" She can still hear his breathing. "Wait, there until I get back. Keep him there." "You with me?" His speech is stunted, and this is it, she thinks.

iv. (She's sure not to throw the door open. She doesn't know what to prepare for here. If he's not Davis she might as well sign her death warrant.)

v. Oliver is dressed impeccably, bruised and a little bloodied up around the mouth. Alive. She thinks those are phone cables that he's immobilized with.

vi. Davis moves easily around him. She doesn't understand what this is exactly. I may not look like a monster but that's when I'm most dangerous. There's something almost predatory about the way he moves. It's Davis and not Davis and she doesn't know how to deal with that.

vii. "He didn't think you would want me here." His hands are rough, dig into her upper arms so they'll leave a bruise. The same planes and angles on his face, his eyes are still brown and there's an absence of the softness there, but something... "I do. And whatever happens that's how it's going to be." She's told him that before, maybe in not so many words; maybe he understands the way she says them now, still.

viii. The touch might help, somehow, so she smoothes a hand over his sleeve non-threateningly. That's human skin under her fingers, nothing less. He stiffens. He may be different now, but there's some of him down there.

ix. She can't explain exactly how this leads to this, him kissing her first, so hard that it hurts, like he's claiming some sort of ownership over her. This is not a struggle for domination and she has to draw him back to himself, somehow; but she's matched and overcome and more than a little lost in the overwhelming physicality of it.

x. He doesn't know what he's doing. Nevertheless she's crushed to six foot something of fully aroused male. This has the potential to go pretty far and Oliver is the room, watching.

xi. (This is the antithesis of what she remembers. He's always so controlled.) There's no red k and she's pretty sure Doomsday isn't coded to seduce human women into stupidity.

xii. So some part of Davis, but not all of Davis. Psychology class. Psychology class. Why didn't she pay more attention to the droning professor? Ego, super ego and...

xiii. It's pretty hard to extricate herself from his grip. The Id is not evil, as and of itself. She runs her fingers over the nearly numb spots on her jacket covered arms, forces the breaths to come slow, won't consider the ramifications yet. "If we leave now, they can't find us." She thinks he understands that.

xiv. Oliver isn't gagged, and with the garbled sound of his voice she realizes that a few of his teeth could be broken. "What do you think ..? People in danger." Something like that. "I can't explain now. Why did you come here, Oliver?" The silence is answer enough.

xv. (He's alive and safe, and Davis is fracturing.)

xvi. "I've got a deal for you. Keep your mouth shut for a few hours and you won't ever see me again. Don't worry, it's all here." She doesn't untie him, leaves the door locked from the outside.

xv. It'll buy them an hour or two, maybe. That has to be enough.

**VI. **_It isn't wise just to play by chance; yet that is the entire point. Pick a card, any card and learn as you go._  
i. Two pieces of packed luggage go into the trunk.

ii. She has no time to switch cars. Her beatle is too recognizable, but it can't be helped. They have to get out here now. Oliver will tell Clark as soon as he's free, and they need to ditch it before then.

iii. Clark can't know about Alaska, because that dream of hers she'd always kept for her own.

iv. Besides that, they have a tiny car, a map, estimated times. There's no real plan, maybe she lied to herself the entire time.

v. There's the additional snag that Davis can't interact with anyone else he remembers, and she's pretty sure he's not going to be helping in the escape. It's all about want, not need or who he is now.

vi. She pulls open the car door open herself, suddenly afraid that he could accidentally rip it off its hinges. He hadn't tried to do much and Oliver might still need about a year at the dentists before he can flash a smile for the tabloids.

vii. (That's why Davis was so scared. She realizes that the true strength he has access to, even human he could crush her bones with one misstep.)

viii. This is a part of Davis, not all. So she expects the force behind that, how it ends up almost like an attack.

ix. It starts in the front seat of a car for God's sakes, with the crackly plastic digging into her hipbone. Discomfort mixes with her body's natural reaction to being close to him. Her mind could be shutting of, with his pushy, warm mouth on hers and a weird hum of urgency that comes from adrenaline, but it doesn't.

x. He's fast and his mouth knows just the place on her neck that sends her head flailing back towards the window.(She acknowledges that she needs just to hold on to something, forget Oliver, who may just have given Linda an opening, who could have brought Clark and hundreds of witch hunters right to them.) She wants to be able to speak.

xi. He doesn't seem bothered by trivialities like words. He's like redK Clark, only this part of Davis isn't willing to grab on the nearest warm body he finds, he's fixated on just her and he's not afraid of what he might do, like he always was. No words, no 'wait' and she can't watch his eyes.

xii. This feels like a betrayal, like she's bearing witness to all the things Davis keeps buried deep down and this isn't Davis at all. Not all of him. She misses Davis, and won't let him go through this almost lobotomized, like that perfect plastic bride. When she has him, she wants all of him, not one part. She's never defined it but there it is.

xiii. (It happened to her just once, like this. Clark had been about to leave, go to the center of the chaos and she'd held on until she realized that she could always hold a corner of him. Just that corner, that piece that was her friend and looked down on her with big blue eyes. Something tore then.)

xiv. When there's only one of you who loves it's not so bad. You pull the rejected pieces to yourself, nurse the wounds and wrap them up in some dark place to find later.

xv. It never works when it ties you both. There's no way to patch it, reverse the damage. This is different because this is a piece of Davis and she wants the whole man and she won't have him for more than snapshots and she l-.

xvi. (In her mind the word flows logically. She won't say it because maybe the word is her kiss of death. She used to be able to say it, to Moriah, to dad, to Clark however indirectly in the center of the fortress. Look where they were now.)

xvii. Other words come easier. "Stop." She wants Davis and this isn't it.

xviii. Maybe it's stupid to expect words like that to work on a primal fraction of the human mind. Maybe he won't hear the words, but more physical languages. The Id is about want, not need.  
"Stop, please. We need to get away first. You want to get away first, remember?" He freezes halfway through, before the rip in the shoulder of her shirt exposes too much. She pulls the rest together so it looks halfway decent. "I don't think it'll exactly do if I go in dressed in shreds."

xix. "Just relax, erm." She doesn't know what to call him now, and he barely speaks. She backs out, pushes on the accelerator, sure they're not over 60.

hand stays heavily on her knee and she feels and ignores the pins and needles.  
Davis will be back soon.

**VII. **_You don't just play with cards, you build with them. You can have a House of Cards built perfectly. It doesn't matter how gentle you are, pull just one of the bases down and the whole thing crumbles._

i. "Welcome back to the world of the living." He pushes himself back in the seat, taking in the strange flashing lights in the dark, the toll booth behind them. "What did I do this time?"

ii. She sees the beginning of a freak-out happening, reaches a hand out to his knee. "You made sure I'd never have to buy guard dogs again. What do you remember?" "I was in the kitchen…"

iii. It takes him all of five seconds to see the finger shaped bruises on her arms. Her nerves are still in high gear and she tries not to swerve. Of course he would react like this, throwing himself to the side of the car window. "I hurt you."

iv. "Oh, these old things. It's the shadows. You didn't. It's complicated." "Those weren't there this morning." It's a quick condensed version, Oliver, the phone call. She leaves out the broken teeth, for now.

v. "So the good part is we know what's going on." "What's going on? You're getting hurt, I'm in this car and pretty soon whatever that was will just come out again." He says 'You should have left me.' nearly too soft for her to hear. That was never an option, not with who she is now. It's startling final that it won't ever be. "You're stuck with me now, and I'm driving."

vi. Four minutes and she knows he's drifting 'somewhere in his sea of self loathing'. Despite the fact that they're different, he's Davis, all of Davis. He'll be afraid to touch her, and she won't have that. "I'll pull over and let you give me a checkup."

vii. This is what she's been afraid of. She can't not look at him with that careful look in his eyes, checking the marks, watching her face. Her stomach twists strangely and she feels like she needs words, any words, even if they're not the right ones.

viii. "They're not ever that big. With human males it happens all the time. Never mind the fact that your conscious self wasn't around to regulate your strength, and you still didn't…" "What was I?" "So there is a theory by Freud…Freud, the psychologist." He was raised Catholic.

ix. "If it's been trying to take you over, this is your minds way of dealing with it. Splintering into bits, so there's more of the human part of you out there. Really, it's pretty remarkable." She knows this way of dealing won't work for long without breaking him beyond repair no matter how unnatural and engineered he thinks he is.

x. (It's more than inevitable that Clark will find them soon. She has turn him to helping by some miracle. There has to be a way for Davis, for them, that doesn't involve broken memories or a mind torn wide open.)

xi. By the time they reach the seedy hotel room, he's taken the wheel and his hands are steady now. Her voice feels worn and not even the armrest next to his shoulder can keep her eyes from fluttering open and closed. There has to be time. There are things she has to say, and she's going to because that's the way it's going to be.

xii. She thinks of that book she read once, where there's nothing left to do but scribble on the margins 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' She breathes, lets herself soak in the sound of his very normal, very human, breath. There's time. There's got to be. She's borrowed enough trouble for the night.

**VIII.** _In gambling, there are games of skill and games of chance and the lines are indistinct between each. Games of skill rely on predicting an opponent's move, letting them act and make themselves their own trap. No one plays with the odds stacked against them. That's why it's really very simple. If they make the choices of their own free will, you just wait until all the variables come together just right…_

i.(Linda Lake never liked to get her hands dirty. It used to be easy before. Currents, water, nothing could touch her. She misses that, hates the solidity of her body now. But now she's relegated to pulling the strings, a spider seated in the enormous web. She doesn't think she minds it. Just one little tug.)

ii. Chloe wants nothing more than to fall out on the bed, but it is 8:45, and she knows that fifteen minutes is not enough time.

iii. Davis needs her to be out of the room the minutes. He's got the nightmares of the first day they met again, and this is her way to keep her safe.

iv. He's going to take the drugs before she gets back, he'll be frozen in the corner of the wall and she'll want to hold on very badly.

v. She shuffles down to the management for one or two towels; and he goes three-quarters of the way with her because this is one of those places he's so familiar with.

vi.(Maybe it's one of the selfish little yearnings to keep the human memories of her held fast for when it tries to batter them down again.)

vii. He recognizes the smell of her skin, now. Maybe it's a legacy of it but it's comforting, if just to know she's there, alive.

viii. That's how he knows someone else got past the locked door before he recognizes that the blonde hair is not the same exact shade as Chloe's.

ix. "What are you?" (He knows already, of course, because he can feel the strange pain again. This woman is hunting Chloe and for once he wishes Chloe will be less efficient, out of sight. He's got a monster inside him and there's very little she can do to him.)

x. "That's not the question, is it? What are you?" She toys almost absently with a tiny pistol in her hand, something that poses not the least threat to him, but could end Chloe's life with one well-placed shot.

xi. He doesn't consciously try to control the force behind his lunge toward it. It takes one very little twist in the metal for bullets and casings to come apart in his hand. The casings drop clumsily from his fingers as the edges sharpen, their tint grays and he can feel the skin breaking between his knuckles.

xii. He knows how it wants to bring an end to this. It's the sickly sweet feeling, blood pounding through his ears, overpowering him. It's irrational because he's Davis Bloome now, and Davis Bloome is not **it**, he won't kill anyone.

xiii. Davis Bloome can't let himself be frozen, leave Chloe in a corner with that woman waiting to spring at from the shadows.

xiv. This isn't the recommended way to deal with this, turn his back to an open threat. He has four minutes to neutralize her and to stop it, in that order.

xv. As it is, his near-human fingers fumble for injections that he doesn't find. All the vials are cracked open, bleeding toxins and life into the chipped sink.

xvi. "I knew that would get you to pay some attention. Those were illegal, weren't they?" That woman is crazy, stalking toward him. Whatever is in him is a hundred times more dangerous than she is, and he can barely see through the red mist in his eyes.

xvii. (Chloe will be back in a few minutes, to this. He won't let her find him covered in red again, won't be the dark thing behind her nightmares.)

xviii. "Get away." He doubts his voice will be human enough for her to hear in a moment. Chloe will know something's wrong. He told her to run.

xix. "No, I don't think I will. I'll just wait up a few more minutes, right here, for you to greet Chloe." She's holding a lump of green rock in her palm. "Insurance." It stirs up strange and dizzying images- a boy with a clean shaven head, mock fighting, a tank, darkness.

xx. He moves forward and for the very first time, in a long time he can feel something boiling and bubbling over his skin. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I'm safe from you, but you're not safe from this."

xxi. "Listen. It's very simple. She's been abducted by a monstrous creature. Superman will be here after she is. (She's always collected you boys.) He'll find her, all bloody and torn, and in the end one or the other of you will die, but it doesn't matter. The world will finally see."

xxii. "You feel it already, don't you?" This isn't trembling, now. It's more like a jolt. Seconds, minutes-Chloe will be back through that door before it rips her apart.

xxiii. Chloe. She'd kill Chloe and this time he'd be the weapon. Blonde hair, green eyes, a strange feeling in the back of his throat. No one person mattered more than anyone else, once. Then one person meant everything. What's left of Davis Bloome knows that this means something.

xxiv. He doesn't or can't hear the rest of the words; they are meaningless to him now. Rushing forward, on legs that changing, clumsy. The spikes will pierce through the woman, keep her trapped. Maybe the burning in his flesh means it'll die too.

I. _Presentation-knowing how to take a gamble. Probability- knowing how many times a coin lands heads or tails. Instinct-just knowing.  
Davis Bloome used to think they could only mean so much.  
Lowest common denominator? You got only so many second chances before they ran out._

* * *

_**Endnotes: **_Don't fire me. The words kinda led here for the time being. The end action has unintended consequences. And there is a part 6! You may like the ending. Really!

_**Random explanations: **_Linda Lake manipulated Oliver into breaking in and involved Clark. It was a manipulation of Chloe and Davis to a certain extent.

Also, the idea of the personality split was not spoiler related. As Doomsday tries to take over, Davis's mind is trying to compensate, and this is how it happens. The Id! Davis scene kind of morphed into Chloe introspection. The book Chloe mentions in xi of VII is I Capture a Castle. And yes, you know what _the word_s are

This part pushes things a little further with Chloe and Davis. In _Crucible_, there was that unintended situation; now there's this one. Chloe has to confront her feelings and Davis goes a bit farther to protect Chloe.  
All of you who have reviewed Crucilble really made my day. I actually have a folder stored in my computer with your comments.

Just drop a word or two, if you read. It is love.


	6. tourniquet

_Next part. not the ending, I repeat, not the ending either. because of this, I may change the rating. Do you think I should?  
_

_**

* * *

****Tourniquet-** a tightly encircling bandage that compresses a blood vessel to stop bleeding. In carpentry, a tie that is used to bind different parts of a whole together._

* * *

**I. **_Creeds. Everybody has them. They are like rules, variables that can define a person. Chloe Sullivan has had at least six throughout her short life and it only takes a few hours for them to vanish._

_Creed #1 had been, never ever to use people like pawns because the end never justified the means. Chloe Sullivan, reporter had seemed endearingly naïve, holding to that no matter how cutthroat the competition for articles got. The principle has stayed even now when she's learning to flee into the darkness, treading lightly.  
(Yet, this is the one game in which no creeds apply.)_

i. On the trip down those steps, she had it all worked out in her head. Clark was going to find them sooner or later. When he did, she'd say almost all the truth, something like "trust me, this once." Pull out that friend's card, even though it's been less and less recently.

ii. No matter what shift set her on a side that stretched beyond his shadow, he was still Clark and she was still Chloe. They'd work together somehow. Find a way to fix this. They always found some way.

iii. She'd forced herself to dally, on the way up after picking two of the least threadbare towels. (He'd made her promise. Fifteen minutes. She'd known for a while that the thought of It near her frightened him more than it did her.)

iv. She couldn't think of ways to deal while fear curdled sourly in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it was those feelings of hers again that made her realize that the game she'd been playing might not have been her own.

v. She'd been expecting it, but the silence still disquieted her. She perceived no external threat, but it felt wrong again.

vi. It had been easy enough, nudging the door open with her foot. Nerves didn't allow her fingers to slacken their grasp on the towels in her arms. (She didn't know what she was seeing really, just disjointed grey and part of a tweed jacket that was far too familiar.)

vii. The broken syringe crunched by her feet and it was all very clear. Oliver. Linda. The reason Clark was meant to be here.

viii. She can see the vague greenish kryptonite glow over what was Davis. The lack of any movement, just like in one of those plays where you're supposed to weigh copper pennies on the eyes of the doomed before the curtain closes. He doesn't die. (And yet always, a little part of him did because of her.)

ix. She doesn't think of what Linda Lake might have said or the fact that there's part of him with that green rock buried hilt deep in his chest. One, to, three, four. Don't look, just do.

x. This, this would have been his hand. Touching It is the way she imagines shark cartilage would be like, the texture digging into thin skin, leaving odd scrapings on her palms.

xi. Separating them leaves fewer drag marks this time, and in the dirty brown of the carpet in barely shows.

xii. There's no human way to clean this up now, hide the massive alien body in the room or the smell of newly spilled copper from superhuman senses. It's not minutes but seconds left for her now. Clark will be here soon.

xiii. Clark knows the tempo of her heartbeat, will be able to pick it up, hear it go erratic. She doesn't think he'll be able to hear It at first. It has no heartbeat at all so maybe, just maybe he won't attack before he hears her out.

xiv. She waits.

**II. **_Creed #2 had been Clark, Clark's secret. Clark above all else._

i. It's like it always used to be. No warning, just the ever-familiar whoosh of air that sends her hair flying into her face.

ii. Clark's not in the red jacket, no characteristic blue. Grey. As close to camouflage as he is capable of getting. He does take a step back from her, this. "Chloe." He looks sturdy against the silhouette of darkness, like the hero of Metropolis in the papers before they turned on him. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. What did he do to you Chloe?"

iii. She realizes this, the way it must look to him. Her hands are red and raw; her jacket is in pieces, her knees are curled against her chest.

iv. "Hey, slow down there. Nothing at all." That doesn't come out quite right. It won't do to defend now that he's looking at her as if she's crumbling. She lets it trickle out, one word at a time. "Linda came to pay me a visit." "Linda Lake?" He can't miss that. "And he murdered her." "She was going to kill me."

v. He is motions to the marks on her neck, the tear she tried to hide straight through the shirt. There are too many truths here, too many lies, and she realizes she can't tell him, now. "She couldn't have done that to you." He doesn't get any nearer and she realizes what he must be thinking now.

vi. "No. This is not what you're thinking. He didn't do anything to me. He didn't blackmail me. It's nothing like that." "Oliver said he overpowered you. "He couldn't help that." "Oliver had to get his jaw reset." "See the thing is, he's got abilities, too. They're strong, unpredictable and when Oliver broke into my apartment, and he was startled." "Why would Oliver break in?" That's another of those questions that can't have an answer when he's like this.

vii. He knows this is Doomsday now, and he's suddenly ready to pull out his dagger out of his cloak. She says the words- that it's doing its best to destroy Davis, that this isn't Lex and that the monster is not the man's excuse this time. The signs are everywhere and Clark just can't see them yet. "You still have to tell me why you're so willing to protect this guy." "We're both…. We're both in the same boat."

viii. Nothing else can come out now, and the argument is not worthy of a reporter, but it's as far as she can go. It's obvious he's not hearing her. He must hear her.

ix. She remembers when her own wrists were bleeding and cut by her hands and something else's consciousness. He'd seen her through that, then, when there seemed to be only one sensible answer full of fear and reproach. He's still her Clark. "I can't go into detail here. Trust me, Clark." she says.

x. "I do trust you, Chloe." He may be eternally frozen into the boy she knew, but he's still reliable, her friend.

xi. She feels the crushing weight lift for a moment, wants to say thank you. But his voice is different. "I also know Stockholm syndrome when I see it. I'm taking you back." He can do that, and suddenly one step closer feels like another gulf.

xii. "You can't do that." "I have to, for your own good Chloe. Once you're free I'll make sure he won't hurt anyone else." He's going to kill him. "You're wanted, don't you understand? This is exactly what Linda intended for you both to do. To prove how dangerous you were. You want to be the triumphant scrawl on her epitaph?"

xiii. She scoots back. He won't get near It or Davis now. He'll be able to feel the kryptonite.

xiv. "Chloe, what are you doing?" Clark is capable of getting close with much pain to normal green k. This seems more potent somehow, as if its not letting him move. She can see the lines starting on his face, and knows he's weakening too much to stop her.

xv. "I'm sorry." He'll be out for fifteen minutes at most. Her hand stings already. "Changing the game."

xvi. She doesn't know how she manages to get two inert bodies out. It's the middle of the night and it's a cheap place. Maybe no one cares.

xvii. Linda's body ends up in an old warehouse. Chloe barely resists the urge to tie her up. (Among meteor mutants, death and powers are relative.) Logically, Chloe knows tying would be indicative of foul play. That can never be, because it's Clark in that hotel room and there's already a price on his head. (When he wakes he's going to have to find someplace to hide. She hopes he won't try to find her.)

xviii. There's Clark Kent, one-time Metropolis superhero and front-page darling, public enemy number one. Chloe remembers him as her best friend.

**III. ** _Creed #3 had been to acknowledge when she couldn't win. She'd pulled herself back from hopeless love with varying degrees of success over the years, had picked her battles and lived to die another day._

i. She gets them an hour away by twisting back roads. There are four directions- north, south east and west. She thinks of herself like the hunter in the isle of Dr. Moreau. When Clark wakes he can't fly all four. That may be just enough.

ii. It's a dark place, where they end up. The smallest of small towns, a mile from the tiny bed and breakfast house where people might not yet recognize the alien's best friend.

iii. Two hours. The digits stand out starkly on the radio dials. It's time now and what awakes could be either part of him.

iv. She wonders how she managed; goes to the backseat, musters all of her strength to half drag it out.

v. She's never really looked at it without the pounding of fear in her gut. Each spike pierces outward, along the ridges of its shoulders to the claws fashioned for maximum effectiveness. This is the prison that is trying to swallow Davis whole. It's almost armor. Perfectly regular, gray crusted brown except to the place where the rock is, glowing vaguely, the area around a strange mangled texture.

vi. This is where Davis's chest would be. When the rock leaves the skin, the strange gray begins to pull back. She links her fingers around his arm and tugs to pull him far away from the rock as she can. This was her and Clark once. Funny how the same things happen over and over again.

vii. It would be smarter to sprint a little ways away, just for some faux reassurance. But she sinks onto her knees in the dirt instead.

viii. She's caught by the appearance, watching everything recede, when the weal seems to shrink on itself, and protrusions turn to pinpricks and pull away from dark eyebrows and closed eyes, leaving his features peaceful.

ix. No breathing yet. It doesn't breathe. Davis is human and he does.

x. The Green rock is tossed somewhere behind the automobile. Kryptonian. Under just the right variables normal Kryptonite could have killed Clark. Linda would have taking them into consideration in protecting her precious story, in creating her nightmare of Othello-esque proportions.

xi. Her hand goes to the spot above his heart and she feels only muscle and cool skin. Before, that first night he hadn't been there, but he'd had a pulse. One second, two, sixty…

xii. Back there had been his death charge. He'd been trying to save her, before the meds ran out, keeping her safe. The thing is it doesn't matter, that she's angry, angrier than she's ever been. He's not going to leave her.

xiii. She's never studied CPR. Maybe two inches above the sternum is all wrong. "Move goddammit. Don't you dare. You hear me? You're not allowed to do this."

xiv. She loses control of her technique and doesn't think of ridges or the stinging in her hands when she shakes him, as his head jerks slightly, like one asleep. He's going to wake up because that's what he does, fight.

xv. She cradles his neck back onto the muddy ground and finds herself quite incapable of movement, sitting on the ground stupidly. One minute, two, three minutes where she thinks that maybe this is what it's like to be empty.

xvi. But she clings to the dream with fingers and claws. She's the girl who used to read the story of the Scorpion and the Swan over and over, waiting for the ending to change. Davis doesn't die.

xvii. She'll wait. Wait a little longer. As long as it takes.

xviii. The eyes that snap open are quite wide and dark, disoriented so she can't tell whether it's Davis or the other. (Right now, maybe it doesn't matter because she has something again.) She recognizes that it is everything when he pulls her closer and twines her hair around his fingers without pulling it.

xix. His voice is roughened, almost as it he's forgotten to speak. "You're alive." He says.

xx. (She could be able to let it out now, tell him she never felt so lost and that she wanted to curse him and his ability to leave her. It's misplaced anger. There are some genetic architects, biological factoids, things most people who won't ever understand. )

xxi. Those are is eyes, and those are his features under the desperate loving look in his face. All of him has an inherent ability to push the thoughts away.

xxii. He looks at her as if she's some kind of light at the end of a dark, dark tunnel and she's lost in the moment, feeling the steady beat of his heart drown out the world.

xxiii. "You're alive." again. And so she is.

**IV. ** _Creed #4 had been to keep her definitions straight and unyielding. There were no exceptions._

i. When she learns everything, she understands just how many steps ahead Linda Lake had been. "This happened because of me. I was so stupid. She'd played Oliver, to get us out and then Clark to set it all up. " Those connections- Jimmy, Clark, all those other ties out there in the world won't vanish and will eventually lead to them both.

ii. "Who knows what's next. I'm destroying you, even now." "You saved me." She thinks that she's not going about it right.

iii. "She was a psycho. But with the killing, it, what it can do to you. This is all wrong." "She told me all about it, you know. She wanted to use me to get to you. She was going to kill you. Maybe it should scare me. Chloe, I would do it again." He doesn't lower his eyes, ever, at time like this. The confession is tantamount to remorselessness, something that the old Chloe would have run from screaming at in true cinematic form.

iv. She realizes that he won't let her go, now. Maybe she is the furthest from the old Chloe, an alien creature strangely warmed by the thought and wanting nothing more that to let him show her. "You're not leaving me again." She says.

v. She scares herself with the sudden primitive desire to grab on to him right then, dirt and muck notwithstanding, to reassure herself that he's real and solid. But this should be about them completely, when it happens.

**V. **_Creed#5 had been the easiest and hardest to break. She'd never let things careen out of her control, once. It got so bad that she'd needed to select the things-the husband, the car, the job that she'd never connected to. They couldn't hurt her._

i. They have a mile trek and she has never realized how tired she's felt before now. It's silly and simplistic that her stomach should growl at such a time.

ii. They don't have luggage and they both look worse for wear. She brainstorms ideas about them as a couple of campers who got lost and found their tent destroyed by rain. They look like it for goodness sakes, practically glued together and wet.

iii. It's much less of a dramatic entrance than she expects. The small grandmotherly hostess answers the doorbell on the fourth ring. Chloe learns there are two tenants, somewhere locked in their rooms.

iv. For being such a nice couple, they get the second master bedroom with the landlady's good parents' portraits gathering dust on the walls.

v. Chloe finds the first old mirror and scrutinizes herself. Things get out in a small town, and all it takes is one person's access to the paper to tear their cover.

vi. She shouldn't have worried. Her hair is darkened with a coat of grime and right now and her face doesn't look like her own. Not hunted, different. More complete.

vii. He gives her use of the shower first, ever the gentleman. (For once washing the blood off her hands is entirely figurative. There's only mud and scrape marks on her.)

viii. As the showerhead sputters out yellowish water that barely clears, her mind refuses to stand still. Six hours left. The Clark option is off the table. The Kryptonian viruses and medications have come to nothing. The Green Kryptonite... She shudders and wraps herself in an old robe of undefined color.

**VI. ** _Creed #6 had been broken before but never like this. If she ever got too close to something, she had learned to run._

i. There is a queen sized bed that looks old enough to have existed before the house. It's a change from the cots and the ground, everything he's known ever since this had started.

ii. Maybe it should surprise her that he's on the floor by the bed, leaning his head back on the mattress, not sleeping. She props her head on his arm, goes along with it.

iii. Her nose brushes across the hollow of his throat and she can feel the beat of his heart, steady and quick. His skin is anything but cold.

iv. Even with her eyes closed she can visualize the curves of his face under her fingers. Smooth low forehead (Sieng Mien for tragic), slightly angular jaw line, dimpled jaw, surprisingly soft lips. No one is buying the 'sleeping' anyway.

v. It's his skin, just his, and he isn't half of himself because that half would be doing something else instead of just leaning into her touch. "I missed you." Deceptively simple.

vi. She can feel it when he swallows, when that frighteningly easy tension uncoils in her gut. He's tensed up, the way that other part of it did before it prepared to spring. She wonders how if there's a line that connects both parts, how Davis keeps it so rigidly in bounds.

vii. She's got one hand on his face, the other seeking a more basic purchase of its own volition. He catches it before it gets very far. "Chloe, what did I do to you?"

viii. She'd seen that coming. Damn all the silent, lumbering elephants in the room. She leans back against his chest and studies the shadowed dollops of paint on the ceiling. "You were different. Ah." She used to be a journalist. "Uninhibited, maybe? That part of you was quite eager to please, but nothing happened." "And that's all, then." His tone is wavering, carries with it a hint of fear. "No."

ix. "I was thinking how I wanted it to be you and how I was scared that there would never be enough time for us to talk, do stupid normal things. And then I thought you were dead, and …" We don't have time. (He's not meant to reply to that.)

x. She can feel the imprint of his lips on the spot between her jaw and neck. (At any other time she could have chalked it up to a hallucination or this being the other part of him.)

xi. She barely twists in his lap to face him before his mouth smothers hers. He doesn't need to explain. They are mirror images of each other, either or both of them could be lost, torn apart at the ties between them. (Maybe they are lost, just like this.)

xii. He deepens the kiss, her hands slide behind his neck. She can taste the aged mouthwash from the bottle of the sink disappearing under something that is only Davis. Sensation makes her perception spin a little bit, bowls her over. The corner of the mattress is gone from sight and replaced by the vague, far off ceiling that disappears with his face and body above hers.

xiii. His lips press quickly down her neck and she can't help the tightening in her body. She squirms slightly and contents herself with trailing her fingers under his shirt and feeling the small shudder.

xiv. Too much stimulus- the way her nerve endings seem to spark and are magnified by how she can feel it echoed through his muscles, the fierceness and single-minded concentration that is only on her. She's not in control of this exact situation, of the sounds she's making, of the exact way she wants to give herself over to him. Instinctual and vague panic wells up weakly, and until notices the way his hands are white knuckled on the floor on either side of her, his eyes soft in the half-darkness. Safe.

xv. The zipper snags like some sort of chastity belt, impervious to two sets of fumbling fingers. She's awkwardly flushed and still giggling at the look on his face, trying to right herself to get the job done properly.

xvi. Perspective. The slight soreness reminds her that spine length bruises are no fun. They have a room this time, with an old, overstuffed bed. The domineering portraits on the wall won't mind. "Come on." It feels natural, to reach out a hand, to stumble into this. She realizes her mistake as soon as they fall into it together. The bed creaks like an entire colony of demented crickets.

xvii. He presses closer and the sound dampens. She's absorbing the movement now and notices that maybe she's been the one causing the terrible creaking. "She thinks we're married, you know." There was another of those corny romances like this once, where they say vows amidst a pool of sheets.

xviii. He pauses enough for her to see guilt and joy etched into this face. (Jimmy, her husband that was not a husband has no place here.) She catches hold, her fingers pressing against his wrists above her. She remembers falling into an electric fence once, how a day after the hair prickled on her arms and every bit of friction ached. When she gets closer, it'll be magnified of course, gravity.

xix. The patchwork of the red and white flannel is gone now. Triumph. Moving on to the next barrier with a free hand. She wonders what this power is, the rattle of breath, a throbbing pulse. Human. Hers.

xx. She tries to press higher but can't move very far. She's half pinned under him now, and too silky bed covers make it hard to do anything but slip when she tries. She's not self conscious around him and thinks he likes to hear it. She gives a thought to the little old lady sleeping a few rooms away and tries to force the disjointed moan back, just a little. It works less and less. (At least she's not screaming.) His eyes scan her face and she feels suddenly weak.

xxi. This is meant to be hard work. Not exactly rivulets of sweat, but one or two drops drop softly onto her face. They mingle, remind her of tears. She accepts the fact that she hates terry cloth, but she's not thinking clearly enough to get free of it. It bunches easily and there's a warm shock as she feels herself fill completely.

xxii. Skin sliding slickly, sticky with sweat; unrelenting pulsing which does nothing to lessen it, sets her adrift a sea of need. One hand feels the deep indentations on the dowels of the headboard and twists around them helplessly. If positions were reversed he might be snapping it now.

xxiii. It's not close enough and she's got to reach… (towards what exactly? consciousness or oblivion?) Her eyes slide shut of their own volition and she sees him her there too. She's clenching, cramping and the juncture between pleasure-that-is-almost-pain, trying to find an outlet and her nails scraping against his bare shoulders will leave no marks. She can't help this, the need that she can't understand. Close, but not there.

xxiv. He kisses her again through the movement and she can lose herself in that, tries to ignore the fact that something is holding her back. It is enough to be close to him and watch the feelings flit across his face, but his eyes are opened too, and he slows, trying, trying to prolong the moment. "I love you." sounds broken, and that is all it. Indiscriminate colors blur and blend across her vision, the lines where they bleed into each other. There it is.

xxv. _IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou._ A mantra, a rhythm. Everything else is unimportant. Maybe one day the words will come out without choking her. You love; this is how children are made, Gabe told her the first time she asked. Both of them doing this won't lead to it, not this time. She's protected and he's coded with deadly Kryptonian DNA that is capable of ripping him to shreds, cursing any offspring of his to a deadly armored prison. A possibility however small. Something from them both before, before... She tries not to think.

xxvi. He makes a move to roll off gently, not to crush her. She pulls him closer in her haze. "I'll be here, no matter what." Her voice is muffled into his shoulder and he must hear. They stay.

xxvii. The house runs on an aged furnace that easily makes the hair at the nape of her neck damp even without the unseasonable warmth of them wrapped together like this. There's a simpler kind of hunger building in the pit of her stomach. Fingers trail carefully along her spine and she burrows closer.

**VII. ** _Creed #6 had been to act in the moment. She would find a problem, leap on it at the first available opportunity because every second posed an additional risk._

i. It's bought time for them again. He won't sleep but that's not all there is to it. They don't have fallback now.

ii. He'll be gone before daybreak, dressed in one of those domestic farmer's shirts. It'll be easy enough to find trouble out there because small towns are not nearly as idyllic as they seem. He might find a monster in completely human form, another Linda, because it's the only way he can't let it out to choose destroy without distinction. He'll come back to her.

iii. She also knows he will find the ammonia from under the sink again and let it eat at his skin before the epidermis re-grows. He'll try to hide the fact that he stares at his face in the glass as if his hand could go through it.

iv. (He won't ever let it destroy her but it is doing it to him, little by little.) She has to… Acid chyme mixes with the apprehension until she wants to be sick.

v. "Chloe, are you okay?" One second, two, three… "Oh, fine. Just a silly stomach growl. It's too late to get something tonight." They've got no food packed, just two bags with two spare sets of clothes. "I can get you something. There must be a seven eleven down the street." He fumbles for his shirt, somewhere near the pillow. The buttons have been torn right off. "I don't feel hungry anymore." "Chloe, it's not healthy." "Says the man who regularly forgets about eating. I'm fine now, honest. After about twelve hours it stops. See? No growling."

vi. This is not what she wants, time apart when daylight can infringe on them again.

vii. She grabs onto his shoulders in case he decides to be stubborn. She's forgotten a key fact about their relative position, and exactly what sensations that movement stirs up. "Chloe." "Yes, Davis?" The coy effect is rather spoiled by the fact that she barely gets the words out right. "Chloe."

viii. (She wants these hours, just Davis. All thoughts of It, of that other part, of preparing to handle the situation fly from her head.)

ix. He leaves before daybreak and after a nice solid meal she feels sick. She occupies herself for three hours filling sheets of paper with all the possible solutions she's researched from memory.

x. Seven hours more. She waits on the doorstep for any sign of him. Before the eighth hour she leaves a note and the check; and finds the dark, dark places at the center of the small town. She'll know how to find him. Somehow.

**I.**

_Creeds. Some can be broken, and shatter easily with one little rebellion. Chloe's last is not one of those. It defines her; tells her that she can never give up a part of herself when she's found it._

* * *

_**Endnotes:**_

So, do tell me what you think. Crit, questions? What do you think I'm perceiving? What do you want to happen?  
It makes me so insanely happy to hear from you. I save the comments in a nice shiny word document on my hardrive.


	7. shear

_**Shear**- An applied force or system of forces that tends to produce a shearing strain. Also called shearing stress, shear stress. A tool, any of various implements or machines that cut with a scissor like action._

* * *

_Life was not always about truth. More often than not it became about those little tiny lies that you told yourself and learned to believe. 'I'm sorry; I didn't have much of a history. It was a mix up of records at the home.' 'I was giving you a normal life.' 'I love Jimmy.' 'I won't hurt anyone.'  
_  
(Once, when Davis Bloome had closed his eyes, he'd seen a world where he wasn't always the lonely kid caught in the revolving door. No blackness, no dreams he woke up screaming from and could never remember. That didn't make it real.) _  
It doesn't make it real._

**(8:00)**

i. His hands shake as he walks. The plaid checkered colors do not blend in with the night and he's a beacon for trouble. He'd waited until the last moment.

ii. Chloe had been trying to stay awake, and it took until the burn started when her breathing began to slow for him to tear himself out of there. His. Home. She was worried for him. Not like he could get hurt any way.

iii. The crunch of dirt and gravel under his feet is familiar, like hundreds of places where he's been and knows too well. One year, he remembers in particular, between homes, where he learned to huddle behind the mess; learned who to avoid and how to survive.

iv. The small town alley is much like the one Davis remembers- pitch black, stinking of asphalt and garbage and fear. Marked with pain, graffiti, blood red. The elderly priest in the confessional told him that this was the one place he should never go; that the streets were arife with sin. Fight evil with good.

v. Even now he can see a few shadowy figures cobbled together. The car screeches away from the drop with the clicking sound of the radiator. Sin, yes. Those kids will wake up one day hooked to IVs, trembling and in sweats and unable to reach a steady hand out to do so much and drink on their own.

vi. It should be stopped, but it isn't yet what he's looking for. Not a killer. It's really pushing him, wants just the bleeding of life, any life. The car has driven away now. He speeds up, hopes he can get away from them before it's too late.

vii. Davis can't pinpoint killers from their looks. He knows this, just one too many true life experiences. So he finds the corners, squatting spots, where all that needs to be known is learned. He's breathing shallow now, but manages to walk himself to a strung out man on the sidewalk, gray hair matted and dirty.

viii. "Need a hit?" the man slurs, holding only one hand out, feebly rattling a tin cup. Davis's cover is kind of unbelievable so he doesn't bother sounding like the medic. "No, I'm looking for someone." The man doesn't respond when he asks about the boss. The alley stretches out ahead of him. He doesn't have time, and there are a few more blocks. It's cresting. Forward is as good a direction as any.

ix. "That's not the right way to go." the man says, not moving to point. Davis realizes he can only move one arm. "Why not?" "That's the way to him. Last time, he was cheated he cut the man's throat out." The panhandler's eyes are glassy, but there's something to them. That's something. That's it. "I have to find him." "You don't!" the man's voice rasps, almost a cough. "That's what the last one said."

x. He doesn't attempt to stand, doesn't try to hold Davis back. Cowers. He's high, his perceptions fail him, but the man believes what he says, he believes the fear. "Nikolav. You steal from him and he cuts out your throat." "Thank you. You've saved lives today." Davis is already stepping away and the man picks up on the light crunch of gravel. Closes his hand on his ankle, skin throbbing. "You want to die?" he asks. "I cannot." Davis says. "I need to do this."

xi. "So go on, don't worry; self-righteous type like yourself-what would you want to steal?" the man's face rattles, cadaver-like and he laughs until another hack of coughing overtakes him.

xii. Davis presses whatever change is left in his pocket into the cup. "Get out of here and get help." he tries to say, but It's insistent and it all comes out as a bark. The darkness presses in on his skull, swirling around this one thought. Nicolav. He won't be able to miss him.

II. _Chloe Sullivan can always bring him back. It's her connection to the only thing that's real. So does the lie matter?_  
** (01:00)**

i. The taxi wheels turn and every pitted bump on the road hits Chloe like a punch in her already uneasy gut. Seven hours and he still hadn't come back, she thinks, and this worries her unlike anything else. Davis didn't leave her. Maybe he'd stopped, gotten himself caught. Maybe one of Oliver's people, Linda's contacts, looking for her recognized him. Maybe…

ii. The taxi won't go any farther than the alley. She nods at the driver, watches the clunky yellow car peel away from the curb in the fog. She hefts the heavy gun in her fingers. She's not streetwise, maybe, but she knows how to protect herself.

iii. Chloe doesn't remember if she can still aim right, much less on time but she takes what she can, holds it a good foot ahead of her. The air is quiet, dead. She can see no one here. Or maybe that's just her problem. It's the fact that she can't see them.

iv. She walks slowly along the wall, dotted with graffiti, the picture in demonic dark-a looming, monstrous wolf face. Dotted with thick clumsy swatches of red. Corny. Or horrifying, she's not sure.

v. Davis must have come this way. It could have been a hundred and one things- maybe he'd wanted to protect her, maybe Clark had been able to come further than she'd thought, maybe he'd trapped Davis that same way, made it so he couldn't get to her. She will do what she must.

vi. Chloe keeps the muzzle trained ahead of her, swivels out at a sudden shift, thankful to see it is just an elderly man, gray-haired, ahead of her. Panhandler. "I need your help." She says.

vii. "You came to the right person. I'm the watchman here. I always keep watch." He tells her she talks like an interviewer.  
"I'm looking for a man with dark hair, dressed like a farmer, about…" she knows it just as if she's touching him now. "This height. Have you seen him?" "Might have. We see those every day. On hearses. Their women never come to mourn them. Who are you?"

viii. "You first." Chloe knows she's not going to mourn. She would have felt something wouldn't she? besides the fear eating at her like acid. Nothing can kill him, not except that monstrous rock and a gang leader wouldn't know that.  
"Davis can…Davis is alive." She would do anything.

ix. "David? Right. Your boy."  
"Where did he go?" No answer for a moment an her fingers are shaking so that the chamber clicks in her hand.  
He tenses.  
"I tried, okay? I told him not to," the man says.

x. "Where!?"  
Past me. There." Chloe notices the red lines winding down against the wall, against the figure of the great black wolf's head. "You like it? The wolves den. David said he had to see him."

xi. "Who's 'him'?" Chloe asks, half ready to just run there, pistol or no pistol. It's black, but there will be light at the end of it. Davis has to be somewhere.

xii. The white haired man props himself up with one arm, leans into her ear like a showman revealing his last trick. She notices that his other arm and both of his legs are stumps.  
"He's a monster. Your Davis didn't come back this way."

III. _Davis's eyes are starting to blur to the way It sees, skeletal outlines in gray. _  
**(07:40)**

i. That must be Nikolav. He can make out an outline standing over someone else doubled on the ground, a grimy familiar sight.

ii. There's room for error, yet, but all he can smell is the blood underlying the tissues, pumping languorously, singing. The sound, It can't take the sound. This is wrong.

iii. The smaller outline (it's just an outline with the sweat crawling its way down to his eyes) curls into a ball on the ground. There's another kick and a slight, sickly crack. The heart beat is fast and weak, and he can hear the sound of the blood in and out of the valves, resounding over and over again. Heart murmur. The burn overwhelms the tearing of bone spurs into his knuckles. Silence. It wants silence.

iv. He pushes a metal trash bin on its side and breathes with the crash, metal on asphalt like nails across a chalkboard. He can still hear the heartbeats, digs his nails into his palms. Get out of here, he wants to say but his voice won't reassure, only terrify.

v. The distraction is enough, there's a scrabble and the killer is focused on him now. Beyond that, on the ground, he catches a glimpse of the boy, trickling blood down his forehead and green eyes. The rage that twists inside him is not just It now.

vii. Nikolav. "You shouldn't have gotten involved. I protect my merchandise. You'll have to pay for it now." He can hear the aggression behind the thick voice; see it in the dark brows as the killer comes closer. He stands a few inches taller that Davis, and so he doesn't see his eyes.

viii. "This should prove interesting." It's the bravado of someone used to this. What is that, a switchblade? The same one that carved out another man's throat can do nothing to Davis, not now when It fights against its bonds and he can't let it. If he doesn't do something now he will lose control. A few yards away, there's a boy with Chloe's eyes.

ix. Stop it. Stop it. Davis thinks. The pane of glass on the car window shatters easily with the impact of the man's body. The man twists away, stumbles. Davis can see his face reddening, rosacea or alcohol over the handsome profile; blood trickling down from his forehead. It sees it to, smells it, that much closer.

x. "What are you?" The other demands suddenly, ramming himself forward, unable to break his grip. Nikolav doesn't bother to try it again, relaxes his body, holds one hand flecked with blood and glass out, appeasing, scrabbling for a white packet. "I'm just a businessman." He says nothing, voice uneasy. "What you want-just take it, we'll call it even." Coke or meth. Davis can barely see but he can hear the rush of blood like greed through his veins.

xi. There's noise, too much noise even when the glass shatters against Davis's hands. It doesn't cut him. "You can have anything. Please." Nicolav repeats. Davis can see the glint of the knife that he's hiding behind him, doesn't react as the man lunges and it bounces off his skin onto the gravel. His blood calms, gathers, self-satisfied. This is the death knell. Nikolav rears back against the hood, eyes empty, realizing, seeing death. Like those kids never got to.

xii. It is there, but Davis knows it is him, in control. The cruel, crude eyes seem to say 'I want to live'.

xiii. Davis's facial muscles contort, and he feels the crack of vertebrae through his fingers, the sounds silenced. He breathes, eyes open, loosening his grip and the… shell falls at an awkward angle in the dirt. Nicolav had killed someone. So had he.

xiv. The man he had killed would've killed again. He would have found more kids, kids like that boy. He would have turned them into slaves. Or monsters.

xv. Davis doesn't apologize to the empty air, doesn't genuflect and pray for the man's soul. He had to do this.

xvi. He'd made the choice, but the empty eyes stare back at him. That last thought before It repeats over and over in his head. I want to live, too.

IV. Jimmy Olsen knows only two truths about Davis Bloome. He is the murderer that abducted Chloe and he is going to die.  
**(02:00)**

i. Some murderer Davis is now, insensibly slumped at the side of an alley, completely helpless. The cool metal burns Jimmy's hand. Chloe might hate him for doing this, but her mind is affected.

ii. The temple, Jimmy thinks, he should aim for the temple. With Kryptonite and handcuffed wrists to keep him immobile, it should do the job, no matter what he is. A part of Jimmy feels almost guilty for doing it this way. It's a very small part so when he shoves the pipe out it is the pointed end first.

iii. There's no back up plan for when the pipe shatters on impact and his eyes open, black, voice low and inhuman. "Jimmy." There's something even wronger about him. Like a… like one of those panthers that tore out your throat.

iv. "What did you do to Chloe?" Jimmy manages to get out, feeling the ring stiff in his hand. Davis doesn't answer. Doesn't use a word, that's the worst of it. "You don't know where she is. She's left you. Hasn't she?"

v. "She wouldn't leave us." Us. Jimmy looks around him and sees no one else. Davis's fingers twitch under the Kryptonite handcuffs once or twice, experimentally. "You know where she is. You will take me there."

vi. Chloe could be in Mexico by now but this is the perfect opening. Jimmy has a feeling that the glass walls of the prison won't do anymore than the handcuffs and he doesn't want to be there when he finds out. "My—my wife left you. I don't have to take you anywhere."

vii. The-It-he is standing up. Oliver and his stupid plan. Get him to Dr. Grohl's lab. Clark will be there. A promotion only goes so far and Jimmy hasn't signed for this in the contract. "Don't come any closer."

viii. The thing that was Davis Bloome stalks into his personal space, invades it, not collapsing as soon as the green ring digs into his skin. It isn't working. "We need to be together. You're going to make that happen."

ix. Jimmy can see his wrists, crusted brown under the cuffs and alarm bells scream in his head. "What's that on your hands?" Davis looks down as if he doesn't even recognize the sight of blood. Maybe he went to sleep at night and told himself that it really wasn't him doing that.

x. "I don't remember, and it doesn't matter. You will take me to her." Somehow Jimmy's legs find themselves propelling him forward, or It does, practically dragging him half the way. Jimmy is not in control, and hates it, but still talks, babbles, because he needs to keep him happy until he gets It into the lab, into that cage to be put down.

xi. Maybe he will listen to reason. Jimmy says how Chloe is beautiful and wants to save him, because of course she does, she has a syndrome that way, how of course he must think he loves her, how this isn't real at all. It is a thing, a beast; It will hurt her. She doesn't want him. "She'll leave you, maybe not today. Not tomorrow. She's always loved Clark."

xii. There is no fear, no unease in Davis-It's eyes, not like Jimmy used to feel every waking day of his life when he'd been near her. As if a monster like it could ever make her feel. Davis looks back with clear eyes of someone completely mad. "She chose me."

xiii. (Jimmy knows what Oliver saw, those hands on her like he owned her; and hers catching hold of his, the rest of her... She's betrayed us all, Oliver had said through his shattered jaw. )

xiv. Jimmy had always known there was something wrong with Chloe, always something about her, more and more so. She was mad like her mother. She didn't concern him anymore. She'd chosen this. "She doesn't know what she's doing. She's sick. You're both s--."

xv. The thing's fists are tied together but somehow it jerks him against the wall, until Jimmy's feet dangle and he wonders if he'll be able to speak again. "Chloe saved me." Its eyes are sure, glassy, un-angered, impatient. "Take me to her." That thing-Davis repeats.

xvi. Jimmy walks.

V. _Davis knows lies. Sometimes, just by existing, love destroys those lies, reshapes and reforms them into a new lie. Something quite like hope._  
**(07:00)**

i. The shovel drags across the dirt, an hour has passed. The choice, Davis had made the choice this time. Not It. Even now he can see the evidence on him, behind his eyelids, the dirt under his nails.

ii. Chloe would see it as soon as she saw his face; nothing could be a lie with her. She'd reach out and it would all bleed away. He wants to pretend that he is just the man that she sees. But he knows he can't go to her now, not with these hands, not like this.

iii. That other part of him lurks back and will surface when he runs out of time. He wants, he wants so very much that it scares him. Soon, he'll be gone. And the other part of him will take.

iv. Uninhibited, she'd said. He'd seen the purplish marks on her wrists; he could hear the pain under her breath even when they came together. That part of him knows her as what it wants, but only he can find her.

v. He can't let it hurt her again. Her life with him will be spent in a constant motion, him It and the darkness, unless he finds a way.

vi. He won't leave her. Can't. Won't go. Both of the words have become inseparable.

vii. But he'll go back to her as himself. Only himself. He walks farther into the darkness of the alley to wait.

viii. The white begins to flicker through, but he's still waiting.  
Wanting to believe.

VI. _Jimmy used to make it alright. He never had to think about truth before he had to. Before he signed his life away. He took pictures, the flashy ones. Newspapers wouldn't print the real ones. People loved the lies, the drama-the addiction. _  
**(01:05)**

i. They walk through the tunnel to the containment area, a corner ahead. A few feet more. There is no cage, and Clark isn't waiting.

ii. Jimmy can't break his grip, throws himself down past the corner near the wall because he can't run. "She's not here." The other says again, still, hatefully reasonable, as Jimmy feels the cement against his cheek. "You lied." One moment Davis is there and another closer, like he didn't even move at all. The cuffs are crumpled in his hand.

iii. Jimmy pushes himself back, crawling on his hands. "So you're going to murder me like all the others?" Jimmy spits out, with what was supposed to be loathing coming out small and thin and afraid. "You do not interest me." Davis says, not so reasonable, with his hands jittering, something intimately familiar to Jimmy, a fine sheen of sweat on his face. "She--We will be together."

iv. An addict. Jimmy bites back a laugh, hearing the sound of clear thick walls hissing into place between them.

v. Finally, Oliver. "You took your sweet time." Jimmy mutters, his hands ridiculously clenched around the green ring. That stupid ring.

vi. No one answers him. It's still dark and Jimmy sees no one else; on the other side of the cage, Davis prowls, as if he's just familiarizing himself with the surroundings. He could tear through it in a minute, just give it long enough.

vii. Jimmy fumbles with the keys, finds the one he used to get in. The door, the door to the right. He needs out before than happens, damn the rest of them.

viii. "He won't escape until I choose." Tess's voice says coolly, stepping out of the shadows ahead of him, hand on the knob. "That's Kryptonian crystal imbedded with a very unique substance. Like an electric fence, so to speak. It will cause the Destroyer no little discomfort."

ix. The Destroyer? Oh yes, she says, the thing that tore down his little idealistic wedding, didn't he know?

x. Jimmy's throat closes in shock, under the hate for how measured she is, how cold. The Beast.

xi. "Where's Oliver?" is all Jimmy can think to say. He put her in temporary charge of operations, Tess says.

xii. Oliver had to go find their errant savior.

VII. _Kal El hasn't been earth's Savior for weeks. He can hardly remember what it's like. _  
**(00:45)**

i. It's moments, minutes and Clark/Kal-El is there, not Oliver. "I found the Destroyer for you. He was captured in an alley by your human friend. I'm almost disappointed in you." Tess says to him.

ii.. Jimmy hears that word over and over and over. Just kill It, he wants to add, but Davis- It's behind the glass, watching him.

iii. Clark isn't a golden boy anymore. His features are no different; but his eyes are older, drawn, pessimistic, looking past Tess and Jimmy, into the cage, at Davis moving closer, pounding his fists on the glass, jerking back before the jolt can really hit him. Unable to see him. "Finish it." Tess says. "Clark."

iv. Clark thinks of Chloe's eyes. She'd knocked him out cold, but then she'd protected him. She didn't trust him. He'd lost them all, his friends. Lex, too, hadn't he? Now Chloe. There had to be either something wrong with them, or him.

v. "How did you get him away from Chloe?" Clark asks, acknowledging nothing else. "Your friend got free on her on her own." Tess looks at him, head on, unblinking. She doesn't know that. "She wouldn't let me stop him...." He counters. …hurt him.

vi. "She's not here. You can stop It before he hurts anyone." Clark knows It murdered Linda Lake, people on those files that have been pinned on him now. "You bring them the true culprit, his head on a plate and you can have your life back."

vii. "That thing didn't kill Lex."

viii. Tess doesn't waver, looks up to him with that almost amused look again. "They don't know that. The murderer is right there. Oliver-Jimmy…We've done your work for you."

ix. Suddenly all the pieces come together, that maybe he's been on the wrong side after all. "You want me to lie." Clark won't murder a man who is bound and caged. "I'm not going to do this to Chloe."

x. "She is Judas. You need to do this. It will kill you." It's destiny of course, written in stone, ever since they fell. Clark can free himself from that; become what he is destined to be.

xi. "No." Clark grinds out, and Tess's expression doesn't change. "I see. You're free to go." He doesn't believe her. She's not Lex, no matter how much he wanted to believe that.

xii. Tess smiles, eyes gleaming, and part of his gut turns to ice. Clark doesn't feel relief, just like he didn't feel relief when he'd saved her when his name had been splashed over her papers that first time.

xiii. "You grow reservations when I cage him? Let's just see what happens when I let him loose."

VIII. _It all falls into place, quickly, savagely. The story of the century. It's here. Finally. His ticket to fame. James Olsen just wants to live._  
**(00:40)**

i. They're nuts. They're going to kill them all. "Count me out." Jimmy says, before either of them can go any farther in this little power play of theirs.

ii. He knows what he signed up for, and it wasn't near approaching this. The benefits didn't cover the half of what he's been through. Oliver will give him his payment, Tess says dismissively.

iii. Jimmy trips his way out the door in the dark, thinking of talons tearing their way through wood and that sound, like beams shuddering apart. Chloe had known all along. A beast behind a man's face, how could any sane person touch that? Chloe, who wouldn't even love him like she loved Clark, putting her hands all over…

iv. Stupid knob. Light and sun. Where is his car? He'll run from her and cut his losses, let It tear her apart since that's what she wants. With that check from Oliver he can find himself miles away to start fresh. This town is too fucked up. This was a job, only a job…

v. "What was only a job, Jimmy?" A familiar voice lilts, darkened blonde hair and green eyes blinding him in the sun. Chloe, standing between him and his hard won freedom, the snub nosed pistol holding straight in her grip.

vi. He closes his hand too late. She knows that ring. "It's coming together. You're Oliver's henchman, now." she says.  
It was the right thing.  
"Dr Grohl's lab, a vat of Kryptonite? Murder? Was that the plan?"  
Chloe is so close he can see the three freckles on her cheek, muscle trembling. The gun. She's dark, not like she is supposed to be.  
"You're going to take me to Davis."

vii. "You're crazy, I don't have to help you." The cool steel presses right against his throat, but he's gonna keep talking.  
"You don't know what he did, what I had to do. Your boyfriend nearly choked the life out of me. Nothing can make me go back in there." The ring of bruises is still there and Jimmy hopes she sees them.

viii. Chloe hesitates for a half second. She's almost…normal. "I'm sorry, Jimmy. I can't let anyone die." She readjusts and shoves him past the door with not little force.

ix. "Move." she says "If not, I shoot on three. One." "Why are you doing this?" It's not about saving, or even about the choice.

x. She doesn't answer, maybe because she won't even trust him as he's about to die. "Talk damn you!" Jimmy yells.

xi. "Two." The trigger clicks. Chloe belongs in a mental facility. Her eyes aren't cold, that's what scares him. They're warm, strangely lit up, like she needs to find her way back there as much as he needs to get out.

xii. "Look, I can't help you. It's all closed up. The crystal sealed around him when I went in, I swear it. Trust me for this once. You'll make us sitting ducks." Jimmy pleads.

xiii. "So show me the way you came in. Then leave me there."

xiv. Chloe keeps pushing and they're below the observance area now. The others might hear them, they might see him. Jimmy doesn't deceive himself into thinking they'll care about him in this mess. Clark had been his 'friend' and never trusted him; he was Oliver's pawn, then Tess's. Chloe sees no farther than that cage. After all he's invested, he deserves more.

xv. "This is wrong Chloe." Chloe's just the cute girl who worked at the newspaper, not some dark phoenix. She can't come back. If Davis turned into the Beast, It very well could. "You're wrong. You'll see when he rips you apart."

xvi. "Wrong? You had no problem doing what you did, so don't talk to me about it." Chloe thinks if she could go the rest of the way without Jimmy she would. That's the last word they say between them for the rest of the way.

xvii. "This is far as I've come." He says finally. Her eyes start to adjust to the dark. The crystal looks like clear glass but a shape-Davis is moving near the edge, head up, like he feels something. Jimmy shrinks back before realizing that he can't see him.

xviii. "They're going to end him, Chloe. Tess will…You'll go down with him." Chloe's forehead touches the glass, her fingers move across the levers and her eyes jump from control to control with uncanny speed. "No. We've got time yet."

xix. Chloe's free hand is loose on the gun, and for a second Jimmy considers taking it, knocking her out, saving her life. He'd married her for a reason, hadn't he? "Thank you. Thank you." She half smiles at him, but she looks past him, into that, into death.

xx. You think you love…that? Jimmy wants to ask, before her fingers fumble for the opening levers. It's all very clear. He's not ever going to be her white knight. "Leave now." She says. Jimmy doesn't look back.

IX. _Kal El has to save the people. Make the tough choices. He's only Clark Kent. _  
**(00:30)**

i. Mind games, business people always played them. Clark has played with better at a Talon table. Tess doesn't want her life destroyed on principle. She doesn't believe in it. "If you do, I'll keep It from leaving this place, nothing more."

ii. "Listen to yourself; he's the Destroyer." "There's a man inside." Clark has black Kryptonite in a carefully lined lead box. Don't show your cards too soon. Save the man if you can. Keep up.

iii. "Why do you think it's this particular lab Clark? Kryptonite? Does that ring any bells?"

iv. There is howling and the pounding of fists against the glass, hissing as it singes his skin. A door closes, Oliver coming back in. The thing in Davis is temporarily out of sight. There are tubs, suspended over the cage.

v. "You think that holding the guilt of his death over my head by the kryptonite will make me kill him out of 'mercy'? That's the worst kind of persuasion I've ever heard. It beats out the alien Jesus."

vi. Tess doesn't just stop to listen, she never does. Tess's fingers dance over the thick lever in her hand. Always, effectiveness. "I wouldn't use Green Kryptonite. It's probably invulnerable by now."

vii. "What are you doing?" Clark narrows his eyes, lets his vision spark. The vat is full, brimming. Red. "No."

viii. "Oh yes. It's all connected, Clark. Linda Lake was a smart woman. We had a mutual interest. Lex Luthor. We thought alike. All of us. Lex never destroyed this place, you ever wonder why? Linda came to me, pointed me towards you. She suspected she was going to die even then. She left a few prize facts." Tess knows, she knows everything. How does she…?

ix. The sounds on the other side are softer, more hushed. What is Oliver doing out there? Does he know about this madness? Of course, he probably does. He killed Lex for petty revenge. Killing without remorse is not a far cry.

x. Tess nods past him. "There were some very interesting reports of the destruction that followed your little escapades. Some would argue that you are a model citizen. A bank robbery? A few assaults? How many people were in the hospital? It's like a drug to you isn't it? Unparalleled senses. Nothing can touch you. Nothing has to touch you. You are more than mortal. You take everything you want. You don't regret it. Do you… Clark?"

x. "I'm not like that now." Clark thinks he would have preferred just Kal. That's what Tess wants to do, trick him into becoming her super soldier under that rock.

xi. "Davis Bloome is not meant to be good. He's meant to be a destroyer. Do you think it'll take more than this little red rock wake It up? He'll slaughter every single person in this room, then this town if you don't. So what will it be, Superman?"

xii. "I'm not playing," Clark says, hand above the lever in a milli-second. She can't get past him.

xiii. "You have to." He sees Davis move into sight again, crouched, clutching something. There's a flash of blonde. Clark can't lose control, not even to save Oliver.

xiv. I should have expected as much from a hacker, Tess says. _Hacker_. She always was a good one.

xv. It's so quiet, but when Clark listens, really listens, he can hear breathing. Loud. Addicted. Alive. He thinks maybe he should tune out. "Davis. Thank God. Thank God." They're too far out of clear sight to be standing.

xvi. Clark can't hear anything, not even a breath for nearly half a minute. "I knew you would come for us." A feminine, thick gasp. "I---know... Green Kryptonite. We need to get out of this. You want to get out of this. I can't let you die."

xvii. "No, that's…That's Chloe." Clark breathes. Tess pushes the button in her hand.

xviii. It all falls.

X. _Chloe has to be there. If it all falls, especially if it all falls, she has to be…_  
**(00:35) **

i. There are things Chloe should have thought of. Logic. Disable the console, wherever it is. Keep herself safe so she can save them. Acknowledge that this part of Davis is a danger before acting. Remember the average man on the street. That's natural, right like breathing?

ii. Chloe can't breathe, half-transfixed by the fsteady brown eyes behind the crystal. This is not DavisDavis. He can see her. Does it even matter? She just has to get in.

iii. It hurts more than Chloe thought it would. Not the clear Kryptonite, that is like any ordinary glass to her. Electricity. It's like a small fizzle at first, soundless, flowing through her extremities; it'll drop her like a sack. Those precautions of Tess's.

iv. For a split second she sees the past on his face. Tense, all of him, marked over with sweat and dirt and blood. Dirt from an anonymous alley, where he waited and waited. Thank God, she thinks. Thank God, but she hasn't believed in so long she doesn't remember.

v. She never lands on the ground. Davis-whatever he is now, throws himself under her, dizzyingly fast, inhuman. He doesn't wince at the jolt, much harder on him than her, hitting the ground first. "I knew you would come." Come for us. He says. Us.

vi. Chloe breathes out, tries to reach for his face and feel skin, moves stiff fingers against his jaw. Maybe comfort.

vii. He lunges into the touch. She would've had the strength to pull him away, very unlikely. But she is boneless, maybe he is her structure. His mouth is harsh, like he's taking part of himself from her. Like she has to be. The sensation, blood flowing back to numb lips.

vii. "Please." She can finally get air. That part of Davis- his jaw almost set rock hard, thick with perspiration. His face is only slightly grimy and his hands on her are covered in dirt...dark red… That was why he hadn't made himself come back. Why is this a relief?

viii. Chloe runs her fingers across them and tries to get the words out of her winded lungs. He could die and she won't let him.

ix. "Davis. Listen. You want…" She's too tired to think of what exactly. "You need…" She tries to pull at him but her fingers won't even close.

xi. She stands. A woman. Tess? Sees her. Smiles. They have to. Getoutgetoutgetout.

xii. Davis's arms are heavy on her shoulders. "You." he says. Careful, matter of fact. This part of him is not threatened by Clark, doesn't even know the very real possibility of death. Only her.

xiii. "You do. I'm on you." Careful, non-threatening and terrifying, matter of fact. She looks at up at him, trying to calm her heartbeat. He can hear that too. They're locked in a cage and unless she can be the one to think… "-get out. I won't let you die. Clark will…" One hand braces on the concrete and his warm mouth muffles the sound. She should have known that one day persuasion wouldn't work on that part of him.

xiv. She needs help, just Davis as himself. Whole. This part of him has the memories, kisses her like before. He won't let her breathe.

xv. He gathers up the edge of her cheap jacket as if the obstruction somehow offends him. Not so horrifically gentle as whole he'd had always forced himself to be. His fingers are warm, touching, rough and firm, flush, finally close enough. His skin shifts against her and she can touch the sweat, can taste desperation in the air, can feel her bones bruising. Hers could shatter if he pushed a little farther.

xvi. They don't, not even when he gathers her up with one arm into him, to the dark, she can't see like he can. She lets him crush her into the corner, tells herself this is easy, natural; she has to speak. She's ridiculous for feeling so protected. She needs to be close to him but…out there...

xvii. "Listen. It's not worth dying… Davis?" She pulls her mouth against his neck and pants, tries to communicate, somehow, however. "Look at me." They need to be able to get away.

xviii. Over them, the tubs sway. Green Kryptonite. Chloe chokes.

xix. "We're going to back out of here. Fast!" She shoves against the crystal and realizes that it locked in place. Maybe with Davis's new strength he could… She hears the displacement of the fluid. Too late.

xx. Chloe doesn't know how she does it, rolls over him, feels it pound on her skin. Maybe it won't hurt him so badly.

xii. The liquid falls heavily, wants to shove her down on his chest but she braces herself, shudders. Terror, cold. Her nightmare. She can't find focus on his face. Davis's hands claw into her jacket and a sound comes out of him. Like death.

﻿

X. _When Chloe opens her eyes her hand tingles. _  
**(00:31) **

i. She hasn't cut herself. Davis's skin is red, as if he was drenched in blood. His eyes…

ii. Chloe sees the red glow at the heart of the irises, looks away for a second, past the glass. Into what must be Tess's smiling face. Like Linda. All so sure of the cards playing out. All so ready for a checkmate. All so ready to overlook the pawns.

iii. Davis rolls her to the ground, teeth scraping into her neck. Clark is behind the glass, floundering again. Soon it will start to affect him too. It used to be his drug. Even if Chloe succeeds in getting Davis out now, he and Clark will rip each other to shreds.

iv. Chloe plays her last card. No bluffs now. She relaxes, shoves against Davis, into a corner on the ground. Let them lose sight. She tightens her arms around his back, counting on her very human hormones to catch up.

v. There's a~rush on his face, half-pain. His arm winds past hers, catching her questing fingers, digging them in. He won't stop. Can't. That isn't a sedative.

vi. He crouches over her so for a second she believes it's just her and him in the room again. He pushes her down. This is a part of her Davis, a part. She can't move an inch, but somewhere she finds herself unafraid. That's where the rest of them are wrong. He is right, too.

vii. She wants to be held but he doesn't hold. Maybe if there was no red… He moves against her, a violent rhythm, trying vanish the burning. Her head slams back down against the glass and he hurts through heavy corduroy cloth, carves lines into her back, tears it away.

viii. His hands are rough and efficient but she knows the way his hands feel. As messed up as it might be, through everything, she knows this.

ix. She moves the inch she can, presses her mouth to the corner of his, feels him swallow in a breath as he pulls her up to him, the warmth itching past her skin, into her. There is almost recognition in his eyes, drowned in hunger.

x. She kisses his mouth and he draws blood. Davis, Davis who would never, never hurt her. Is she betraying him like this? She can't stop, can't make her hands gentle either, make them stop from scratching into his neck, against the cloth on his skin. Maybe the monster is in her too.

xi. The drenched flannel falls away from his chest and there is a crusted mark on his neck as he leans into the contact, pushes into her, past any barriers she has left.

xii. Slamming down, all of him unbearably heated. The feeling singes her, half-pain, half-completion. Again. And still. This isn't hard.

xiii. She gasps and bites into her bloody lip, knows he won't tear her apart. Davis. The part of him that chose, the part of him that just took. He'll see just her. If Clark can stay away. If they can focus on each other… If they can just…be…

XI. _The white draws away, melts into pinpricks, into normal black behind Davis's closed lids. _

**(0:15)**  
i. His skin burns. There is a buzz in his head, and he knows his senses enough to be sure it's not quiet here, not dark and dank. Not where he had stopped.

ii. Davis can hear Chloe breathing, feels her skin smooth against his neck. Maybe it's morning now and he has to... Maybe he wove the nightmare in his mind. He knows that's a lie before he thinks it.

iii. His eyelids slam open to red. Everywhere; around them, on the clear walls (where are they?) clinging in beads on her normally white skin. Like the nightmare. "Chloe!" She's breathing, in his arms. It's not blood.

iv. He'd gotten himself into trouble, she says. Tess, her people. Jimmy brought him here.

v. It's alright. It all doesn't matter. He needed her. They're both here now. Here now, she says, and he knows exactly what ~he did.

vi. "Oh no." Her fingers glide across his mouth, gentle. Closing it. "Don't have another panic attack." She whispers. "Later. Now…it's…complicated. You didn't hurt me."

vii. "I don't rem-" "It's okay." She says. "We'll stay in here. We're safe for now." But it's not. It never does. He has no knowledge of this, being unable to stop, what he could do.

viii. Her light hands toy in his hair and he clenches his fingers, shoves his head against her neck. "Okay, okay." She whispers. This-red- affects him. She couldn't stop either and at the time... She's sorry. He would've found her on his own.

ix. The darkness couldn't stay away from her any more than he could.

x. He sees the cage. It's automatic. He wants to push her behind him, put… this thing in him between whatever else could tear her away. He thinks of the memories of hers. He won't let her be trapped under the needles again.

xi. But she's under him. Trapped. He starts to move her, feels her thighs shake where they hook against his back. He can hardly force himself to pull away. She's in pain.

xii. "Don't move, okay? Right here they can't see us." She kisses the side of his face, nudges her head against his cheek for a moment. He tightens his hands over the worn jeans she helps zip up. Afraid, almost, to touch her. He breathes in, smells her in the air.

xiii. "We'll make it out of this." Chloe says. Like before. Like always. Maybe she's helping him lie to himself; he can't let go.

xiv. She's fumbling, flushed. "I'm going to go up and talk to Clark." Clark took her memory for her own good, and now, now, he has them both. "I'll make him listen. If he can control Tess we'll be fine."

xv. "And what then?" And then they run again, another road, another life, someone else. More people, more cages for her, and she's been in enough all her life. And then she gets hurt, not because of them, but what he's becoming and he won't; can't let that happen. There has to be a way, but he knows that there are two paths left.

xvi. "Wait. I'll go with you." he says. Chloe pulls herself away a little. "I don't want him to get hold of you. It's safer…" "I think I need to. You'll be right there. I think I'm scared to let you go." She smiles when his fingers stumble, pulls her clothes together, voice almost light. "My hero, huh?"

xvii. Davis takes advantage of the lull to look up at her, trying to see what he'd done whiting out. Chloe's eyes catch his, and for the first time he knows why she hopes, why she has to believe. She's not afraid of being alone. He is in her the same way she is in him. She is him now.

xix. She comes closer, clutching her shirt to her chest. That need to be hers, the gentle clutch of her hand against his shoulder, the dizzying rush of heat that follows her touch like an afterimage… It all burns.

xx. Davis straightens up, half-dressed but it's not like there is time to prepare anyway.

xxi His breath falls like a heavy thing. The dark purple marks Chloe's back, into her shoulders. He doesn't see that; she's looking up at him, hasn't turned her back. He knows it from the stiffness in her movements she thinks she hides so well, the white that he can somehow see, cramped, aching muscle trembling under her skin. His vision… Its vision. That's his wake up.

xxii. "I love you." he tells her. This is the thing with love, the way it's supposed to be. She has a chance and he doesn't, and he's going to give her hers.

xxiii. "I know." Chloe answers, and when she looks up he has an old memory, like déjà vu. Don't, she says, but he is doing it, this time. "I know you'll say it again. Let's do this thing." She holds out her hand, and his fingers trace that old bruise on her wrist, trying not to clutch. So long ago, was it, less than a day? He can hold on now, just now. Just until he makes the choice.

xxiv. Before Davis knows it, he's walking forward; they are; looking into stunned eyes. Clark can see them now. He must have lied to himself, thinking he could just lay himself down.

xxv. It is starting to wake, a heady, choking darkness, and this is how he knows what It will do when he gets close. It's strengthening, pushing again. He'd been made for this. Davis's limbs feel like stopping, buckling under him, but they don't.

xxvi. Chloe's with him. Not until she's out. At least. At least.

xxvii. There is a woman there, looking on in amused fascination, like he is about to perform a trick for her. Like he can't make it stop.

xxviiii. Chloe opens her mouth; unable to hear a word from the other side, but Davis can hear it all, crystal clear. The woman is saying Kal has just a few more moments to act. The second stage will start soon.

xxix. _ **It** can't hurt Chloe. _

xxx. It won't get to that point, Clark says, firmly, in a voice that has dazzled hundreds of front-page writers. He has a destiny too.

xxxi. Davis knows from the first twitch, white, underlying human skin, sees Clark's muscles bunch and contract.

xxxii. Clark lunges forward, a black something in his hand, beveling the glass like a paper mache piñata. Davis can see Chloe's eyes full of that again, and terror. She doesn't have the speed to stop Superman.

xxiii. Davis closes his (he can't look at her now) stands stock still as he fractures.

XI._ I won't lose you.  
_Chloe is just human. She can't keep that promise.  
**(00:05)**

i. One second to the next, Clark plunges a familiar black stone into Davis's heart. Then, he throws himself back, eyes swaying vermillion. Out of the cage, again.

ii. Davis isn't dying. It's like his eyes are completely awake for the very first time, agonized. Not as this other Davis, but not just the part she knows either. His outline blurs, shatters and it seems like he's pushing something out of his skin. Pushing everything away.

iii. The currents throw Chloe back about ten feet, hitting, sizzling against the field for a moment before she rolls onto her face, wind knocked out of her. She can't see. A few scratches and all the cuts open up, trickle on her face. She wipes the drops, the red Kryptonite, away.

iv. Davis is where he fell, hands down on the concrete, looking half awake. Chloe crawls to him, doesn't see the silhouette of a looming monster. Maybe he escaped though the gap in the crystal. Maybe Clark was suffering…he'd come through. She has to fix this. All that matters this moment is getting to Davis.

v. She feels Davis touch her hands on his face, leaning into her, letting her mouth bleed onto his skin, tender again. Not just his paramedic hands. He's awake. He's alive. He's not afraid of what he'll do.

vi. All thoughts of fate, destiny, and loss vanish. This was just so simple. If they'd only known… Chloe wants to laugh, wants to hold on tight but everything hurts too much. "I won't ever let anything hurt you again." Davis whispers. And believes it.

vii. A touching portrait, Tess says to Clark, smiling cooly, a finger pressing flat, on her tightly tamed hair. "You've made another miscalculation. He's Kryptonian. You didn't split his DNA." And there is his proof.

viii. A ways away, Clark sees no Destroyer, just another carbon copy of Davis waking in the corner in the dark. That is the dangerous side.

ix. "You should have known this yourself. You should have thought of that, Clark."

x. It's like that rock, against his skin, but this time it's a trickle. Clark is beyond this now. Everything burns. He should fix this mistake. He will not be spoken to like this by a…

xi. Clark stares though the crystal, biting his lip, keeping the urge in check. He doesn't have double vision.

xii. He remembers when he was split. Two parts of him, good and evil sides. The duty and the rest of him. Only one half of him remains.

xiii. But he cannot just kill the Destroyer alone. He has to choose to kill the Destroyer inside the only other being who shares his burden. He clenches his fists. It wasn't supposed to work out this way.

XII. _But it does._  
**(0:02)  
**  
i. Chloe just doesn't let go; Davis lightly rubs a hand across her shoulder, calming his heartbeat. Still knowing hers.

ii. Something hurts, but he ignores it. The remnants of the chemical, his fear. They are in a cage.

iii. Davis sees It against his reddened skin, shifting strangely and mammoth and darkening. The shadows. It has to be the shadows. No.

iv. Chloe doesn't notice at first. She touches him, Davis feels burning. The black burning- the bones aligning themselves under his skin, getting ready to tear. To tear through her.

v. Davis throws himself back when the black eats across his neck. It wasn't supposed to work this way. It was supposed to stop. Why isn't it stopping? It's past his hands now, eating up his forearms.

vi. "What is this?" she whispers. His problem is that he knows all too well. "It didn't cure me."

vii. The burning shoots up. "I can help you." She pleads. Not now. Not now.

viii. Davis's voice is measured, like he's coaching her through giving a particularly needy person oxygen. "Tell Clark to open the cage. Tell him to get you out."

ix. He collapses on all fours in the cage. "Please Chloe." Davis's voice cracks under the growling. He has to kill…

x. Clark is going to kill him.

xi. That's the 'good' Davis, his body quivering with spines like a pin cushion. Enough with this pretext of humanity, the rush tells Clark. He's strong now, strong enough. He won't let this pitiable monster kill Chloe. She won't get out on her own.

xii. "You're not meant to be a common man…Clark. It's about time you learned." Clark wants to tell Tess to be quiet again. Tess is not going to call him Clark not like that, not like _he_ used to.

xiii. He will protect his friends this time.

xiv. Davis's eyes are clouded with sweat. He barely sees as Clark blurs in, to Chloe. Relief and agony blurs in his gut. "Please." He growls out. Maybe Clark should stop It first. But Chloe is first. Save her. Save her. Make his choice.

xv. There is no gentleness in Clark's face, only drugged purpose. Davis has had all of that he needs. Clark tears Chloe away, a fraction of yard and she fights.

xvi. Then Clark is flying, knocked hard against the clear crystal. A mere tap.

xvii. Across the room, the dark Davis's red eyes examine him, curiously, wrathfully. "You're not going to take her from Us again." As he thought, part of Davis will never let go. A kidnapper, a murderer, the devil. Kal rises, smiles. Finally a challenge. He's not a common man.

xviii. The sounds of the ringing titanic clash should be the loss of hope. To Davis they are his last card. Nothing else is left. She has to live. "You have to get out."

xix. The claws dig into Chloe's shoulders. She won't heal from this. This is significant, Davis knows. She has to leave him this time.

xx. "I can't do it." she whispers. She puts her hands over them shifting into black, already sprouting sharp points. He leans into the warmth. (Somewhere underneath, he still feels it.) Davis reaches out, and the destroyer cuts a bloody line into her cheek. It can smell her blood already. (Why? he wants to ask. Why now?)

xxi. He can barely hear his voice. "You can do it. You can do anything." He knows her. Chloe literally can't, closes her eyes tight, tightens her fingers.

xxii. Davis knows he will stop it. He's got nothing else. When he retreats into himself it's a memory he goes to again. Another. A dream. When they'd both first gone into the basement. He's seeing the green rock in his hand and he's telling her to use it. The veins start on his face and she slams the lid shut. This is stupid. She wouldn't ever kill him.

xxiii. Everything starts coming back, slowly, faster. Injections. Black. White. Black garbage bags and blood on his face, not feeling sorry, Chloe's hands knotting the last tie in a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Chloe's hand against his, drawing him out into the light. Warm skin and leather and the way she was reckless when she touched. Both of them crouching together in a little corner by the wall. Driving and dying and waking again. Vows in the middle of nowhere. Her eyes full of that. It was only starting but they'd believed.

xxiv. Just a little longer. Davis tangles their fingers, gasping at the burning spreading though him, tearing his skin into black curved spikes. No, that's not right, tearing back into his skin. Into him, back into his lungs with a wet sucking sound and he can't breathe. If this is pain then… He bites the feeling back.

is not awake or asleep; his mind is caught in the trance needed to keep two things separate, to keep It down. He'd take it on himself. He's winning the fight. Bit by bit the spikes draw back into bloody skin.

xxvi. Not drying. Bleeding. He won't stop bleeding. Only then Chloe realizes that this is killing him.

xxvii. "I promised I'd never hurt you." Davis says. She catches his head on her lap; he can't keep it up anymore.

xxviii. Have Clark and the other part of him stopped fighting? Will it matter? She can't hear anything else. She knows his heartbeat is slowing down, retarding. Like before.

xxix. The blackness comes, but it's a different blackness. Almost calm, but of course, it can never be truly calm. Chloe is dazed, and Davis can barely hear her breath, getting farther. She doesn't seem to believe this.

xxx. He'd kept his promises, all but the one that mattered. Davis wished he could have kept the other too. And yet, this is the way he would have wanted to die. She's alive, and while that happens, she has a chance.

xxxi. It's time. The destroyer will die within him. Davis doesn't think maybe. He knows right about the time it all ends.

xxxii. Chloe runs her hands through damp, damp hair and feels the strands tangle into the cuts that the spikes just made in her. "Not this. Davis." She says, but he can't hear.

xxxiii. "I love you."

**0:00**

I. The truth should be unbearably easy, to say. It shouldn't choke you. That is a lie. Chloe Sullivan is choking for the fourth time in her life and it changes nothing at all.  
(She always knew it would end for them- a blaze of light, or the moment they couldn't run any more.)  
_IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou._

"Davis. Davis. **Open your eyes.**"  
_  
_


End file.
